Doors we open, lines we cross
by AristideCauquemaire
Summary: When things happen in front of our eyes, they sometimes start to happen deep inside of us as well. Severus Snape who has seen too much in his life already has yet to learn this. This story isn't for the faint-hearted. HP/DM, angst and some violence later on. (Complete)
1. Chapter 1

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: none (for now, but H/D)

Rating: M

Warnings: Yes, this is my first. No, I didn't have a beta. Bad punctuation is all mine.

This story does not fit snugly into the original HP universe. Imagine with me that the first taking of Hogwarts takes place at the beginning of Harry's 7th year instead. All the rest you'll figure out as you go, I'm sure.

This story, I have to tell you, does not abide by the laws of ff dot net. There be smut, explicitly, and language that some people might call 'bad'.  
Please give it a shot nonetheless, if you feel that you're up to it. It is a story about crossing lines, after all. Leave a comment, that'd be quite lovely.

**-/Chapter 1/-**

/

Severus Snape was a spy. He wasn't quite sure when it had started, or how it had happened exactly, but he was. For such a long time, in fact, that to him, being a spy was linked inseparably with being alive.

In order to become a spy, he had, likewise since an unspecifiable point in time and manner, given up being what others might call 'normal'. Sometimes it seemed likely to him that he hadn't been entirely normal to start with, but to commence spying had meant separating with the last vestiges of normalcy he had clung to. Or that had clung to him in the vain attempt to make a social animal out of him, whatever the case may have been.

He had given up on being careless or optimistic. He had given up on sleeping deeply, and breathing deeply. He even avoided thinking too deeply unless his surroundings were absolutely stable and controlled, for fear of missing a moment. For years and years he had anticipated for each and every moment to be the very last moment of his life, and he hadn't been able to bear the thought of being inattentive and missing it.

/

And then, a baby boy – _the_ baby boy, son of Lily Potter, the one woman who Severus Snape still loved and still longed for after long, bitter years of slow abandonment and ultimately outright betrayal; the boy who, in another life or another universe in which he was a better and much braver man, might have been _his own_ son – killed a man.

Sifting through smouldering debris, it was hard to say what exactly had transpired that night. But to Severus Snape it was clear that Harold James Potter of Godrics Hollow, barely aged one year and three months, son of James and Lily Potter, née Evans, both recently and violently deceased at the age of 21, had indeed killed a man.

Tom Riddle had come to the Potter's house that night with fear in his tiny, blackened heart urging him forward – actual human fear that Severus had even spied in his eyes at the mention of a prophecy of downfall and defeat.

Harry Potter, tiny, crying, swaddled Harry Potter had been instrumental to somehow deflecting a curse that had killed the man Tom Riddle once and for all and left only the monster, flayed of anything humane.

The monster, not quite dead, had curled up like a worm on the pavement and then slithered into the undergrowth for some time, unseen. Like a snake leaves its skin, it had shed the man's fear into the mortal world. It wasn't much, for he was just one man, but it made countless people shy away from saying his name.

/

The times had been deafeningly silent. And boring, in a good way. Placid, one might call it. They had been content or even something akin to _happy_. For years on end Severus Snape had the luxury of thinking about little else than employment, timetables, exam materials and exam correction, pupils and pupil evaluation, and homework. And about food – glorious Hogwarts food, tea that was never tasteless, never too sweet and always hot enough, coffee that was invariably _exactly right_, meals that deserved six-page descriptions, especially the holiday meals. Every year he had – by his standards – exhaustive conversations with Albus Dumbledore about which feast had been superior, Start of Term, Hallowe'en, Christmas, New Year, Yule Ball or End of Term. They never agreed. Mostly Severus reckoned that this was a tactic of Albus' to get him to talk, even if it was just about tarts. He preferred that marginally to listening to Albus talk about socks.

He didn't think about spying, although he was aware that it never really went away. It was something that just happened, like blinking. It didn't demand or require any conscious effort, it was just _there_.

At the same time, there was no one to collect results. No one to keep track, no one to punish and hurt and terrorize him if the results he brought forward were lacking or displeasing in any way. Severus was at peace with spying.

In those calm years Severus Snape managed to convince himself that his spying was merely a habit that he was fond of, a hobby he was good at, something that had everything to do with his superior memory and perception and nothing with those memories starting in his adolescence, shrouded by his mind in self-defence. He became certain that he had developed it to help him with potion-making. Or maybe it was a quirk, a talent. A sport, even. A substitute for sudoku and crossword puzzles to keep his brain sharp.

His decision to keep his abilities alive was to the disadvantage of the pupils of Hogwarts and quickly earned him the questionable titles of Greatest Pain-in-the-arse Classroom Tyrant and Least Liked Teacher in the History of possibly just about Ever.

There were no notes passed on during his lessons. There was no whispering, no cheating, no wastefulness with the ingredients, no sloppiness with the notes, no inattention or daydreaming. Anything unrelated to potions was simply unacceptable. A not-so-smart Ravenclaw with the unfortunate name of Adalbert Corkduggle was the first and last pupil who ever attempted to surreptitiously finish an essay for another subject – Transfiguration, in his case – during his class. For the rest of his life, poor Corkduggle would never hear the names 'Snape' or 'McGonagall' again without flinching and paling a little.

There was nothing and no one that escaped him.

The very year he started his employment as the Potions Master, also taking over the post of Head of House Slytherin from Horace Slughorn, he noticed during one of his nightly walks that dungeons, not unlike the Astronomy Tower, attracted students in search of privacy.

He could even understand them, to some extent. He had been young himself, once, and pubertal. He had kissed sloppily, groped clumsily and fondled in the same dark corners of this maze – not anywhere near as much as he would have liked to, usually in exchange for Potions or DADA homework, and, sadly, nothing more than that had ever happened, granted. But aforementioned things _had_ happened once upon a time. In those very same places, too. He had been a Slytherin, after all.

Still, there had to be rules and they had to be kept at all costs.

As time went by and past horrors faded further into the distance – so much so that many of them felt like they had happened to a friend of a friend of an acquaintance somewhen, somewhere, maybe –, rules and making sure they were adhered to became more and more important to Severus.

Perhaps this was because everything else that had ever held his undivided attention receded into unimportance and degenerated into pictures with a sepia tone. Or maybe it was just because he was getting old, and both the half of his life he was looking back to and the half that still stretched out before him were, if he were entirely frank with himself, generally disillusioning and disappointing. It was a bad, even childish reason to be as unpleasant as he was, but this was the one thing he had started in his life that had him believe that he could actually finish it, and properly, and so he would damn well keep going until the bitter end.

His bed had never been anything but empty. He wished the castle were as big as it looked from the outside. If it did, his walks would take longer.

Through endless trial and error and several visits to the Restricted Section of the school library he found a way to deal with the wards of Hogwarts that ran through its walls like veins do through flesh and skin. He had noticed that they interfered with most of his usual spying spells and made them unreliable. Then again, there was nothing quite like a good challenge, and nothing more satisfying than overcoming it.

His new and modified spying spells allowed him to put silent alarms connected to his private quarters onto the most obvious corridors, classrooms and niches. They also enabled him to detect the warmth emanating from human bodies, to see around corners as well as through walls of stone and doors of wood, and to eavesdrop. In short, he was all but over-equipped to manage the tracking down of addle-brained, amorous teenager couples out for nightly adventures in the castle's bowels.

He also made a habit of watching and listening for a minute after having successfully located the perpetrators. Not for kinky pleasure – there were very, very few pleasurable things about a desperate teenager's sexuality trying to express itself. No, his interest in details was inspired by pragmatism.

In the same way that _Know thine enemy_ is true for Muggles, _Know thine enemy and frighten him with your knowledge_ is true for Severus Snape.

Simply stumbling over Barry and Olivia in an alcove wouldn't impress them, Severus had learned. They'd be flustered, embarrassed and chagrined about the hours of detention they'd get, but they'd inevitably be back sooner or later. Worse, being stumbled over by a teacher would give them a fright that obviously only added to the allure of sneaking into the dungeons after curfew and misusing them as a private room a second and sometimes a third time. As if it were all a titillating game of hide-and-seek for them.

Addressing Barry and Olivia with their names at the exact right moment had proved to be far more effective. The tone of voice and the volume was important as well. Sometimes his entrance had to be silent and unnoticeable, so that he seemed to materialize out of nowhere like Filch and his awful cat did. Sometimes he would fling doors open with a bang, a flourish and a billowing of robes that would have made Gilderoy Lockhart break down in tears. In some cases it would be ideal to use the information gleaned from the previous minute of observation and eavesdropping against the two of them. Subtly letting them know that he _knew,_ that he had the knowledge to embarrass them to the marrow of their bones was the vital part of this art; perfecting it was a delight that Severus indulged in with wanton. After being caught, literally, with their pants down, Barry and Olivia also tended to be much more diligent in Potions class. Other teachers might have called it 'extremely subdued' or 'completely paralysed with fear'. Personally, Severus had never set much store by other people's pedagogic methods.

By the end of his second year of employment Severus Snape knew that he effectively mastered the craft of creating childhood trauma. And he was _really_ good at it. His reputation alone kept all but the most desperate, or dense, or daredevil snoggers out of his dungeons – hence the rise of the Astronomy Tower's popularity among the student body.

After a year or so, his magical alarms only went off once every other month. Sometimes nothing happened for three, four, even five months on end.

He still stuck to his routine of nightly walks. Betimes he would clear out the Astronomy Tower as well, but as a rule he never strayed very far from his subterranean realm which was so complacently void of other people and belonged only to him.

His bed was still and always empty, its sheets numbingly cold.

/

And then Harry Potter was old enough to attend Hogwarts.

As soon as the boy became a part of the wizarding world again – after, as he understood the headmaster's anecdotes, roughly nine years of a childhood made entirely of deprivation that, in Albus Dumbledore's sometimes questionable brain, had served nicely to build the lad's character – it began to churn and boil like a cauldron filled with volatile, reactive base potion to which an ingredient had been erroneously added.

Severus' days of peace were over before he even recognized them as such. The tension rose steadily and before long, in a mere matter of four years, the situation had escalated beyond redemption over again.

Before long, he spent almost every night out of his empty bed again, travelling through the country again, meeting seedy people in seedy places again, exchanging information neither Barry nor Olivia had ever dreamed of in their worst nightmares again. He became too tired to sleep and he wished desperately for the exams to take his mind off the things that transpired, but they never quite managed to. All too soon, he spent every waking second consciously _feeling_ his left arm again, thinking about that breathing, pulsing, living _thing_ right under his skin, burnt into his muscles, carved into the bone.

Later, he found himself being smothered by a black hood again and, finally, by a silver mask that was always slick on his skin with perspiration and water vapour from his breath. And, more than once, soundless, bitter tears.

Spying under pressure still fit him so well, after all those years, like a shoe well worn-in half an eternity ago. The punishments for failure seemed harsher now which, he reasoned, was only natural given that the monster Lord Voldemort had swallowed up and taken the place of the man Tom Riddle.

Lord Voldemort had no notions about future investments.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, fundamentally scared of the future like every human being was, had been concerned about his henchmen and their loyalties. He had been worried about defectors and about scaring his own helpers away from him, knowing that, despite his own greatness, they alone made him truly mighty and fearsome and _someone_. At the same time, he had been frightened that one of his footmen might rise up against him eventually. He had been anxious about not being able to hold on to his power a week, a month, a year, two years, ten, twenty, fifty years from any given day.

Lord Voldemort was devoid of such notions. He had faced death and death hadn't held on to him. Eternity lay before his feet. Present and future were one single unit, and this unit belonged to him and no one else. In this picture, minions were a mere liability. A flaw staining his perfection, only a temporary necessity to spread the news. Like everything else except for himself, they were fundamentally irrelevant. And so was their pain.

Still utterly worn and tetchy from a seemingly endless string of Cruciatus inflicted days ago, Severus Snape decided to throw himself at the mercy of Albus Dumbledore, like he had done before, but for good this time. Knowing in his gut where it would lead.

Although the man hated him – and deep down he did, doubtlessly, because deep down Severus could not help but hate himself either –, although all of his goody two-shoes comrades despised and mistrusted him, and although there was, realistically speaking, no way for him to survive _this_ war as well –- at the very least, on Dumbledore's side he was _relevant_. Not very. Not much at all. But people knew his name and noted his presence.

Maybe they would note his absence, eventually.

It was this thought that he was dwelling on in the night of the finalist's ball as he sat cooped up in his dungeon quarters, on the desk next to his empty bed.

The scroll under his fingers was flecked with ink and ripped in two places. Every time the ugly mark on his arm flared up with pain, he wouldn't be able to hold on to his quill properly, would involuntarily stab and rip the parchment and break the delicate feather tip. Ink would splatter all over his last will and splinters of keratin would scatter over his desk and into his lap.

He wasn't angry for ruining the will because no one would ever read it anyway. He had burned the last three versions and he planned to do the same to this specimen. But, he thought as he renewed the tourniquet and pulled it so tight that he grunted with effort and pain, people would notice that he hadn't written a last will. The people around Albus Dumbledore just _worked_ that way. One day they would find themselves standing in front of a small heap of his former belongings, his leftovers that had been swept together – mostly cauldrons stained beyond recovery and jars of exotic ingredients he had ordered for himself and not for Potions lessons –, and look around asking each other going 'Well. What're we gonna do with all this shit, then?'

And then they would remember him.

Severus knew he shouldn't find this thought soothing but somehow it was. Just like writing his will – listing up his meagre possessions – calmed his nerves without good reason.

In the far shelf, one of his glasses suddenly began to sing. It took him five full seconds to understand what it meant.

The alarm. Lovers in the dungeons. On his last night. _An after-prom date. How predictable._

He screwed the inkwell shut, rolled up the parchment into a neat cylinder before tossing it into the fire, cleaned and whittled the quill and put it into his drawers. The glass kept singing its high note. As he was doing up the buttons to his most billowy robes – with fingers that were unsteady exclusively due to the pain, surely – another glass joined in, then another and finally a small one in the corner, giving him a clear idea of route and destination.

He almost smiled to himself as he locked the door to his personal quarters behind him and went on this chase, the pain in his arm receding before the onset of his hunter's calm.

~~~~  
**TBC**

_This was the first of several wordy, expository chapters. My first (and, thus far, only) commenter has commended my "command of language" and called my writing "powerful" - thank you, duj! - , so I like to make myself believe that there is something enjoyable about my blah-blah. _  
_If you feel that way, too, do check out the coming 11 chapters. Please enjoy._  
_If wordy exposition makes you drowsy, let me assure you that stuff happens in chapter 2 :)_

_Thank you for reading!_  
_Aristide_


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Okay, girls and boys. This is where things get a bit... M-rated, I would say, but other people have other ideas about rating, measuring explicitness and assessing the possible empotional damage that reading this might do.  
So... yeah. Consume with caution, I guess. (And with delight, if possible.)

This story is about to become a story featuring sex. Gay sex. If you're not into slash or generally have a problem with two human beings of the same sex being together that way, please turn on your heel right there. Goodbye.

**-/Chapter 2/-**

/

The two had taken to a long since unused classroom deep in the bowels of the dungeon. It was one of Hogwarts' countless lost rooms, unfortunately placed at the far, far end of an already unfavourably slanted, dank, smelly, narrow and altogether confusing corridor. It lay somewhere close to a natural reservoir of ground water that insisted on soaking in through one of the walls every autumn and sometimes in spring. Last Severus had checked – some four, three years ago – it had been reconquered by mostly eyeless insects feeding on the fungi that bloomed on the walls, and a bunch of school ghosts, forgotten in time. He had taken a quick look around, decided that it wasn't worth salvaging, not for any purpose, and left it to oblivion.

Severus stepped close to the still-sturdy door – soundlessly, since he had spelt the soles of his shoes silent, and gingerly, because the stones under his soles were slick with lichen – and applied one of his own spells with an unnecessary flourish of his wand, his nerves tingling in anticipation of this opportunity for another grand entrance. _The little things in life, indeed._

The dark, mottled wood melted into a watery substance, giving him clear view of what was going on inside.

Slowly, very slowly the scene before his eyes sank in. His brain took its sweet time with making sense of it.

_Well. This was unexpected_, a voice inside his head remarked helpfully.

He had not seen this coming in any way, even though he knew he should have. He had not consciously seen any signs pointing in this direction. There should have been _signs_. For a moment he doubted his qualities as a spy and it felt like doubting his own fundamental humanity.

Long moments stretched even further and eventually ticked by. He knew that he should have interfered a minute, minute and a half ago. He should have thrown open the door and swept into the room with billowing robes. He should have separated the two and he should have _done_ _something_.

Instead, he spied.

He watched the reflection on rippling water, hardly daring to blink or to breathe as if the picture had hypnotized him, his pulse starting to hammer away in his ears. The more he strained to look at them dispassionately, the less he succeeded. Long-since unfamiliar and definitely unwanted warmth began to coil in his loins.

They had put up a few magical candles to illuminate the desolate room. Their yellow light made Potter's slim back gleam with sweat and carved dramatic shadows to trace his spinal column, making him seem a lot more muscular and toned than was likely. His shoulder blades stood out clearly, their angles stuck out like the roots of dark, jagged wings pointing toward his spine. The tips of his hair clung to the back of his neck, black as crow, jagged and wet as if they had been dipped in oil.

Malfoy's long, thin legs were wrapped tightly around the Gryffindor's hips, reminding Severus of the pincers of a crab, holding on to Potter's body for dear life and pulling him even closer towards him. Potter in turn held him up, the muscles of his arms taut and hard, hands gripping and holding on to Malfoy's slim waist firmly. Roughly.

Malfoy's delicately long-fingered, aristocratic hands gripped the edge of the table he was half-lying on, so tightly that his knuckles were bloodless and as light as his hair.

His fringe was tangled and drenched, plastered to his forehead.

One of them had put up a silencing spell so that no sound escaped from the room. Yet as Malfoy arched and writhed on that tabletop, making his sweat-bathed neck, chest and abdomen shine in the candlelight, Severus could _feel_ the noises that came out of his wide-open mouth in the pit of his stomach. Cries of pleasure seemed to pummel on his diaphragm.

He found his glance irresistibly attracted by Potter's arse and thighs. He could see the muscles contract under his skin, hollowing out those boyish, firm cheeks as Potter thrust himself into Malfoy, each push powerful bordering on violent, ferocious, savage. His hips were driving against the other's arse in a relentless, rolling motion, broken by sudden bouts of quicker, shallower jabs. Severus could see how the table's front legs were leaving the floor with each of Potter's thrusts. In his head, rhythmic bumping and screeching of the wood against the stone mixed with Malfoy's keening moans and Potter's low, animalistic growls. It became a symphony, deafeningly loud, as he watched, mesmerized and sucking in shallow breaths.

_Oh god, oh god,_ he heard. _Yes, Potter. Please. Stop- don't – don't stop,_ he heard. _You like that, don't you, slut, take it,_ he heard. _Oh my fucking god fuck yes deeper yes godyes please. Please-_

A shudder and a whisper escaped his parted lips.

_Harder._

And then realization hit him like an icy tidal wave, and his mark seared in pain, reacting to his turmoil. Ample amounts of sour saliva flooded his mouth, readying him to regurgitate the evening's food right on the spot. He hastily ended the spell on the door with an unseeing whip of his wand into the general direction, thunderstruck, helplessly furious at himself, chiding himself. _What are you doing, you nasty, degenerate pervert?! You filthy creep! Peeping on teenagers! Watching seventeen year olds having sex. _

_You are sick, Severus. Truly sick. Disgusting._

This had never happened before.

_This will never happen again._

An ice-cold vice gripped his intestines and clenched. He retched, fought it all back down, and fled.

He was already more than halfway back in his quarters before it became clear to him that collecting himself and breaking up the... private meeting would have been an option. It would possibly have been the one right thing to do, since he couldn't even be altogether sure if it had been consensual. Malfoy sure had looked like he was in agony, panting and twitching and shuddering like this, ribcage heaving like that, manhandled like that by Potter, of all people.

Instead, he entrenched himself in his private quarters – even locking the door twice, just in case someone or something had followed him – and washed the vile taste out of his mouth with several swigs from a bottle of old and rather strong Firewhisky he had saved up for years for a very special occasion that had never arisen. The alcohol also, opportunely, numbed the pain lancing through his arm up to his shoulder that had turned a worrying dark purple around the tourniquet.

Dawn crept across the horizon outside the walls of Hogwarts. Locked up in his subterranean fortress, Severus didn't know and didn't care. He was busy lying awake, still fully clothed, his head swimming with alcohol and the desire to finish the throwing up he had started earlier, the prospect of leaving Hogwarts in a matter of hours toward an gloomily certain future and, unbidden, with vivid pictures of Potter fucking Malfoy in an abandoned dungeon classroom. Fucking him hard, fucking him helpless until he screamed and his quivering cock spluttered white all over his hairless chest, fucking him until he flooded his tight, hot arse with his semen spurting from that hot, hard prick and Severus groaned, physically in pain, and rolled over, wishing honestly to die there and then, sick to his guts.

Lying there, shivering, on his bunk bed, he felt unbearably warm blood pumping through his entire body, pins and needles from the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers. It wasn't the Firewhisky.

It had been so comfortably numb before, cold, as chilly as the sheets of his empty bed. He hadn't _minded_ being cold. It had been his normal state of existence. It had been good.

The sight of the two boys fucking had kindled a flame that would never go out entirely again.

Thawing hurt unspeakably.

/

He suffered for three hours in which the mark finally acquiesced, until hangover set in and gave him – along with a splitting headache – some amount of clarity and a little peace of mind.

Nothing had happened. Yes, he had spied on them, yes, it had been a detestable act doing so. It was undeniable that, while he hadn't meant to do it in principle, he had willingly and consciously done it and that he was filthy, filthy and guilty and he rued having done it more than he rued most other things in his life.

But in the end, no one knew.

And no one would ever know. No one, except himself, was harmed or compromised. It would never happen again – not only because it was the last night for Potter and Malfoy and, indeed, himself in this castle. Severus vowed to himself never slip again. He would not become a voyeur. It was twisted and _wrong_. He would not – never again – cross that line.

He would keep that vow for the coming five years, ten months, three weeks and twenty-two days.

/

During all this time he also kept the memory of that which he had witnessed like other people would have kept a beautiful secret. It wasn't on the front of his mind very often, because he was busy trying not to die of deprivation, hunger, thirst, raw pain, poison or sheer despair. He was too busy fighting, lying, spying, deceiving, killing and, ultimately, testifying his way to naked survival.

When they finally let him go as a „free" man, he laid eyes on the strange new face of the world for the first time the way one lays eyes on the disfigured and shattered face of a formerly beautiful lover.

Severus Snape rent himself a dingy two-room apartment in a Muggle block of flats in Liverpool, locked the door twice, drew the yellowed curtains, literally buried himself in blankets and disappeared.

/

In the solitude of this self-imposed confinement, the memory reared its head again, as if it were a concerned friend who wanted to make sure that he was still alive the only way it knew how.

Severus wasn't so very sure of that last part, himself.

He knew logic would command that someone so functionally inadequate and damaged as him could not be alive. Especially when taking into account the impossible odds he would've had to beat – two wars, a spy in both, partially a traitor to both sides at any given time, _get real, will you_? Or taking into account all the things he'd done, terrible and ugly for their necessity. Also taking into account all those more than functionally adequate, undamaged, unbroken, _good_ people who had died. Some of them right before his eyes.

Some of them before his wand.

He started to have dreams and woke, if not drenched in cold sweat and screaming, then with a painful erection. He took care of it pragmatically, not strong enough to ever fight the mental images that populated his mind.

The memory grew and festered like an unclean wound. Soon the core of reality was almost lost to him, shrouded and overgrown with fantasies he had spun to sate his need.

In the end, he started brewing potions that caused temporary erectile dysfunction and inappetence which allowed him at least a margin of control over his body. As the erotic dreams receded, the other kind of horrible ones pushed to the front.

He took them as penance for his despicable sins. For one of them in particular.

/

It was eight months later when he walked out of the flat and the Muggle world and back into Wizarding London. Albus Dumbledore's last will that had finally been read out publicly, and someone had insisted on letting him know. There had been whole flocks of owls which he had turned away, until he ended up with letters flying in through the crack under the front door or wriggling their way through the dusty, grimy bathroom vent and circling his head, occasionally smacking his face. He considered his hideout compromised, so he had gone and got himself a new one in London. To be honest, it was Muggle London, and the flat looked like the old one's first cousin, but it was a new one nonetheless.

Even though it turned out to be a sustained effort instead of a one-time only short sprint, and despite his doubts that this drudgery would prove to be worthwhile someday, Severus couldn't bring himself to disobey Dumbledore's very last order.

The will commanded him to reclaim his life and to avoid exactly that which he had been doing. Albus had apparently known how he would end up. The old man had known him too well.

/

Working at the Ministry wasn't a bad thing at all, he found. The inexhaustible supply of top-quality ingredients was simply wonderful, his working hours were as much under his own command as they had ever been back in Hogwarts, his tasks were diverse and never dull. There was always a little space for his very own (and not always legal) side projects left. He had a team – two graduated Ravenclaws and a Slytherin, as well as a silent Ukrainian woman called Galyushka who had allegedly received her education at Durmstrang and communicated with hands, eyes and odd little curtseys – that was moderately talented, disciplined enough and not entirely insufferable.

Harry Potter had insisted on giving him the job.

As the new and undisputed head of the Auror Department, the Slayer of Dark Lords and two-time Saviour of the Wizarding World he had more influence within the Ministry's organisation than anyone – least of all the old and new Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt – would care to admit to the press, even though it was basically the most open secret in history.

Also, Harry Potter had grown up and was now complete in all respects. More powerful than even Albus Dumbledore had ever been, with a cunning and calculating mind, sharpened by years of pitiless war followed by years of pitiless politics – connivery and scheming for the positions that carried the most clout –, both softened and hardened by all the loss and tragedy he had seen, Potter was nothing less than imposing.

He was also, Severus had noted when Potter had suddenly appeared before him as he tried to traverse the Gringott's entrance hall and find himself an available goblin accountant, taller and older than his father had grown to be in his life. And he was taller than he looked in the pictures. Hardly anything except the hair and the eyes was left of the underfed and underloved orphan he had first laid eyes on at the sorting ceremony eleven? Twelve? ..._many_ years ago. The transformation was only marginally less drastic than Tom Riddle's metamorphosis into Lord Voldemort. It didn't offend the eye so much. It mainly didn't even meet the eye but rather the unconsciousness. It made Severus shiver a little inside and it felt like Potter knew full well it did.

So when Potter had asked him to take the job as the Potions Master for the Auror Department and additionally serve as a special advisor for the Order of the Phoenix, right there and then, surrounded by scurrying goblins and people with purses full of clinking gold coins, Severus Snape had nodded and said „certainly" without ceremony. What else could he have said? No point in being difficult and wasting anyone's time.

He had managed not to stare at his arse or back as Potter had turned and walked out into Diagon Alley. On Potter's face there had been the level, mildly satisfied expression of a man who had anticipated getting what he wanted – and who was, indeed, already used to always getting what he wanted by now.

/

His immediate colleagues and the other workers at the Department had not taken to him easily to say the least. More than once they had engaged in outright obstruction and sabotage of his work, while at the same time they were too afraid of Potter to take decisive steps against the 'marked traitor scum' in their midsts. After a year or so, the hostility finally subsided and gave way to a distant professionalism that gratified everyone.

He was just busy trying out a new formula for a high-potency blood-cleansing potion when a Ministry memo fluttered into the room and almost immolated itself in the flames under his cauldron. He could save it from an untimely death even though it was a little singed on the edges, unfolded the paper bird and scanned the lines.

_To Severus Snape, head of Potions Dept.,__Order of Merlin 1__st__ class, _

_Special Advisor of the Order of the Phoenix  
In light of recent events pertaining to the re-emerging  
of the Death Eater known as Lucius Octavius Malfoy III  
on the European continent, I call all 1__st__ and 2__nd__ tier members  
of the Order for a closed conference to devise a plan for  
locating and arresting Malfoy Sr as well as his supporters and,  
to this end, establish proper cooperation with French  
__and Italian outposts._

_The meeting will be held at 12 Grimmauld Place starting  
at the 24__th__ of this month.  
Please send this memo back to my desk after reading.  
HP_

Severus reread the memo again with a frown, re-folded it and sent it back to where it had come from, a positive answer to a question Potter hadn't felt the need to ask directly at all. _What a prat_, Severus couldn't help but think.

He frowned into his cauldron.

Grimmauld Place, everyone in the Wizarding World knew, was the home of Harry Potter. Whenever a wizard from another continent or the outskirts of Europe or a muggleborn child was newly introduced into the Wizarding World of the UK and would ask 'What's this Twelve Grimmauld Place everyone is talking about?', everyone would answer simply, 'The home of Harry Potter.'

What everyone knew but no one ever said was that it was also the home of Draco Malfoy. Because it was evil to speak of such things.

~~~  
**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Unfortunately, as you probably already noticed, I'm big on exposition and more than a little wordy. Put your seatbelts on, ladies and gentlemen. This journey is going to be a tad long.

If you look out of the window to your left... you'll see some graphic detail of unpleasantness. Please complain via comment, if you wish.

**-/Chapter 3/-**

/

Severus had completely lost contact with Draco after the night of fleeing from Hogwarts. He had been grateful for that at the time. The fulfilling and loosening of the Unbreakable Vow he had tied with Narcissa had left him in a state of aching sobriety. It had felt somewhat like waking up from a dream that had been long and horrible, only to find that it had all been real.

An endless loop of that soft "Please, Severus" had been running ceaselessly through his head, ambiguous and empty to everyone else, the very last order of his master to him, feeling like a blunt knife plunging over and over into his chest. It had driven him to pulling out his hair in thick handfuls, bushels of long, dark strands dripping with blood. He had howled like a dog that night when no one was there to listen any more, and, trying to quieten himself, had gnawed at his knuckles until the skin was hanging from the bones in red shreds, until his gums and teeth hurt.

His plate had been more than full and Draco, insecure, immature and scared out of his mind as he was had not made the situation any easier. Severus had been relieved when someone – he didn't even remember who, even though he dimly remembered some manner of exchange – had taken the boy off his hands.

It seemed the entire world had lost sight of him for the next few years. Whereas his father gained a truly horrendous reputation, the son was never once mentioned, by neither side's intelligence. As if he had dropped of the face of the earth and everyone collectively decided to forget all about him, or as if he had never existed in the first place.

To this day Severus could only speculate as to what had happened to his former pupil in those obscure times. He didn't speculate, though. Not unless he could help it.

/

It was a mild surprise to spot his former pupil in the army of Harry Potter, close to the front line – de facto close to flanking Potter himself who, stubborn Gryffindor git that he was, insisted on spearheading personally –, during those last battles. Severus had stood across the field on the other side, taut like a bow string and ready to surreptitiously throw maiming and killing curses at the backs of those around himself when the bright beacon of flaxen hair caught his eye.

He had really thought him to be dead in a ditch somewhere.

The disintegration of his information network, due to the death of too many people and too much chaos, accounted for his ignorance on the matter of Draco Malfoy's resurrection, yet he still felt like he should have known it. Like he should have had a gut feeling of some sort.

As the fights went on, and on, and on, he saw so many blond people die and so many pale, contorted bodies and so many cut-off heads sporting blond hair rolling through the wet dirt that part of him reasoned that one of them had to be Draco, just because of the odds. There were, after all, not so many blonds in Britain.

Yet when it was all over and the dust had settled, there he still was. Hardly any pictures of Harry Potter's public appearances were printed by the newspapers in which Malfoy's pointy face and his hair, snow white in the greyscale photos, wouldn't pop up over and behind Potter's square shoulders at some point. _Like a pale shadow. _Like they were still on that battlefield.

/

People never got used to it. They naturally knew exactly who Draco was – whose 23 dominant chromosomes he had – and they were deeply concerned with the company their boy hero kept. The masses waited for the day _Lucius Jr_ would put a knife in his back. They half-joked that the entirety of the nation already had their mourning clothes ironed and ready in their closets. They still waited to be proven right to this hour and would possibly keep waiting forever, eventually disappointed when it failed to happen in their lifetimes.

Potter, in no uncertain terms, made clear that it was entirely his decision which kind of people he surrounded himself with and that the ignorant masses would do well to mind their own god damn business. He gave exactly one interview in which he briefly and vaguely talked about Draco's loyalty to and his efforts for the side of the 'light' – Potter called it ''my side'' without sounding presumptuous doing it – , both of which he promised he would never suffer to see doubted, by anyone.

True to his word he had two successive Prophet editors and, some time later, a high-ranking member of the Wizengamot removed from their jobs – one of them even removed from the UK altogether. Their doubt and suspicions regarding Draco had leaked into the public on The Prophet, Witch Weekly and the Spanish El Profeta, respectively. Naturally, Potter hadn't been blatant about it and no one ever officially stated that it had been his doing, but everyone knew why these hard-working, upright and proper wizards and witches suddenly had their workplace rationalised and their homes relocated to Biloxi, Mississippi, USA.

It was quite a scandal that certainly took the euphoric edge off of Potter's popularity, something Severus hadn't thought possible. He had reckoned that the people just loved to adore their Boy Wonder too much to ever see reason, but there it was.

People now knew that Potter protected his associates fiercely. They learnt the hard way that he wasn't shy about using his power and influence to achieve this, and that rules bent over for him. People now knew he wasn't a boy any more. He knew he could be as cold, harsh and unforgiving as any other politician. Mainly, they were furious with him for taking away their illusions, for daring to reduce the false image they had had of him and treasured so fondly.

Since then, everyone only spoke in hushed tones about Potter and Malfoy.

Those tones rose to a susurration like that of a swarm of angry bees when Potter announced publicly and in sufficiently specific words that he and Malfoy would henceforth call the Order's headquarters their home.

No one wondered why Potter would move into 12 Grimmauld Place. After all, it was his by right and legacy, given to him by his deceased godfather who had been lifted into quasi-sainthood due to Potter delivering 'The True Story of Sirius Black' to the press, much to the disgust of Severus.

Furthermore, even though no one had ever seen the house from the inside – or from the outside, for the most part, despite Potter permanently un-hiding it soon after moving in –, everyone was convinced that it was a _real_ Manor, prime property, exuding distinction into every direction. If word of mouth was to be believed, it was luxuriant, fully equipped with a whole party of house elves catering to their hero's every need, ceremonial halls with mirrors for walls and gaudy Rococo frescos covering the ceiling, and an entrance hall large enough to play Quidditch in. It was a residence befitting a world saviour all right, despite its gloomy past and its history of sheltering such thoroughly unpleasant characters as Walburga Black.

What everyone was scandalized at was the part of cohabitation with Draco Malfoy.

Suddenly "the Malfoy Thing", already a complicated constellation to begin with, was laden with juicy innuendo. The Wizarding Community was even more ridiculously tied up about homosexuality than the Muggles, Severus found. Generally speaking, wizards were ridiculously uptight and prudish about sex – but sex featuring people whose "bits" allegedly "didn't fit" was bordering on a particularly perverted act of violent crime. Countless times Severus ended up biting the inside of his cheek when he heard people getting het up about it as if their getting "offended" meant anything. They also tended to invent the most ludicrous codewords and phrases so they could avoid uttering the words "homosexual", "gay" or "fucking". _Who knew that Harry Potter was one of them who pick up a wand at the other end, if you know what I mean? Who knew that Draco Malfoy was one of them who de-gnomes the next-door neighbour's gardens? Well, we sure know he is busy de-gnoming Potter's garden for dear life, don't we. If you know, what I mean.  
_

Everyone who really knew Harry wasn't very surprised about it at all and tremendously relieved by the turn of events. At least this was what he learnt from a conversation with Neville Longbottom, of all people, over a surprisingly friendly pint of after-hours butterbeer at the Ministry kitchen.

/

Longbottom – who had also grown up and into his body, shedding his bad teeth position, several layers of awkwardness as well as his over-anxiety of his former potions professor along the way – had obtained the post of Ministry Herbologist several months before.

Apart from supporting St Mungo's, Hogwarts' herbology and gameskeeping staff and the Ministry's Agriculture Divison ("The first unit working in ongoing cooperation with the Muggle government", according to a visibly proud Longbottom), it was his job to be the Potions Department's main source of information and ingredients.

Severus quickly realized that Longbottom knew just about everything concerning the more exotic materials. The former Gryffindor thus became his go-to person whenever he wanted to experiment with a certain but not-yet existent variety of a specific plant. Longbottom was as brilliant a herbologist and plant breeder as he had been hopeless in potions and Severus was unexpectedly very pleased to work with him. Especially since he didn't need to wear Longbottom's grandma's hat in order to make communication possible.

Also, being talked to for a span longer than a minute, even with the occasional eye contact, was refreshing. Not that he would ever have admitted it to anyone.

They ventured into the Communal Kitchen on the second floor, a place that was shunned for its irritable cook and a notoriously fluctuating coffee quality and perfect for a bit of conversation. The butterbeer he had been treated turned flat and unpalatable in its glass as Longbottom, without any incentive other than the urge to share apparently, related gloomy wartime stories about his former fellow Gryffindor, current Head of the Auror Department and Wizarding England's World Still-Almost-Saintly Saviour.

Apparently, Potter had taken the death of Dumbledore, Hagrid, Granger and the Weasleys – Ronald, Ginevra, Fred and Bill – as well as the irreparable injury some of his friends had suffered – Arthur Weasley, Severus knew, had lost a leg and Dean Thomas would never be able to use his hands again – harder than even Severus would have dared to imagine.

"If the people knew how close he was to being worse than Voldemort, they'd not be brave enough to speak _his_ name either," Longbottom had mumbled in very low tones despite them being the only people in the whole big room, his one remaining eye glazed over and staring, troubled and jaded, into the past.

The unexpected and unannounced arrival of Draco at the 'light side' was the one thing that turned Potter back towards sanity, Neville had told him. People were relieved to find that, somehow, Malfoy acted like an anchor or a life belt to their leader who, to all intents and purposes, was a derelict at the time, truly adrift.

In that last year of war, Potter had gone rotten. The grief had finally eaten through. He had become stubborn, irritable, flat-out mouthy and unreasonable. There had been increasingly frequent outbursts of uncontrolled, destructive magic which Potter had never cared to try and rein in, which were elicited by his rage – as if he were still a small child. He had provoked fights and hit people with spells or fists, knocking out teeth and breaking eye sockets. He had been insulting and cruel. Then and when, a mood swing would take him off hard and he would hurt and starve himself as penance for his own awfulness, only to begin the cycle anew once the next event would ignite his wrath. Everyone had been fed up and perplexed, so they ignored and isolated him, too occupied with trying to stay alive and win the war (whatever that meant) to care properly.

After the attack against St Mungo's, Potter had taken to run amok. Longbottom called it "suicide attacks" which he had launched solo and unannounced. More than once he returned, after hours of people worrying and being angry about his unexplained absence, with a blood-splattered face. Sometimes he was icily calm and unapproachable, sometimes reduced to a sobbing heap of remorse, but he was never able to remember – or willing to tell – whose blood it was. They would usually find out a day or two later, one way or another. Potter would end up in the sick bay, recuperate from the effects of his victims' resistance or his mental breakdown or both, and then the whole story would begin anew.

They were grateful that, for some reason no one could understand but no one dared to question lest it should stop, the frail blond was able – and determined – to put up with Potter's vicious mood swings, his complicated, almost psychotic personality and his wanton, brutal aggression. No one was entirely sure, Longbottom had said with a drawn smile, how he had managed to get the train wreck that was Harry Potter back on the rails and running in the right direction, but he did it when no one else in the entire world could.

Severus had sipped the stale beer and said not a word.

/

So these were two of the people he would soon hold conference with, Severus now thought as he slowly stirred his potion anticlockwise, slightly annoyed that it was neither as deep a shade of yellow nor as viscous as he thought it should be.

He was aware of the fact that the remark about the "second tier members" was nothing but a cypher, reminding everyone that Draco would also be there and that Potter expected him to be included in the discussions like the regular Order member that he was, at least on paper.

It was very likely that several members would strongly object to Draco Malfoy's presence in the selfsame room in which they planned on hammering out a tactic to get a hold of his elusive father. In theory, everyone knew that Draco had as much an interest in apprehending and neutralizing him as they themselves, maybe even more. They had all heard the anecdotes of how Draco had switched sides, or why. Having been familiar with Lucius, having seen him in action – both long before and during his shocking degeneration – Severus could believe all of them without blinking.

Still, some people said, blood will always be thicker than water. And if it wasn't that, could Draco really be trusted to be unemotional about this? Could he be disinterested enough to be of any help and not be in the way? Severus already heard Potter's voice in his head, calm and decisive like a politician's, going _No one can be disinterested about Lucius Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy has inflicted pain on every single person in this room in one way or another. _Confused clamour and debate would ensue. Potter wouldn't have any of it, and then there would be silence as people twice his age would remember just who they were trying to shout at.

This conference promised to be interesting at the very least.

If he were altogether honest with himself, he also had much baser reasons for looking forward to it. He shoved those aside for the time being and tried to concentrate on his ruined blood-cleansing potion. After some more minutes of trying, he found that he wasn't able to focus sufficiently and ended up tipping the entire content of the cauldron away, mildly annoyed at his own wastefulness.

/

The days before the start of the conference found Severus inundated in papers.

Potter had copies of all available reports of French and Italian ministerial intelligence about "suspicious" movements in the regions of Grenoble, Nice and Torino, as well as unofficial statements from Swiss and Monegasque Ministry members about even more 'suspicious activities' – internal reports, Severus noted, very curious as to how exactly they might have come into English Ministry possession – sent to all Order members. _The Prophet doesn't tell or doesn't know the whole story, as always_, a scribbling on one of the stacks' front page said.

It became his bedtime reading and the more he read, the truer the scribbling became. How fortunate, indeed, that the public didn't know any of this. That they didn't know what was happening, and who made it happen. There would be riots.

He found it hard to find any sleep afterwards, not only because both the subpar translation spell and the original French gave him headaches. Mostly it was because of the picture that emerged when all the little pieces, like a mosaic, were put together. _Who would've thought that Lucius Malfoy, deranged as he is, would still be capable of launching an organization that size?_

Then again, was he really? Some of these attacks and crimes sounded decidedly Muggle in nature. There was no rhyme or reason discernible, either, and not just because the reports contradicted each other on several points. Something was rotten about the whole situation. Severus remembered the unnecessary verbosity of Potter's memo. _The Death Eater known as Lucius Octavius Malfoy III._ The operative words being _known as_. And then the use of his full name?

Then again, maybe the latter was just meant to make those pricks like Dawlish and Anderson uncomfortable. The two of them were notorious for not getting the notion of Draco and Lucius being separate entities into their thick skulls. Half a year ago, they had already teetered hard on the edge of Potter's patience when they advised him repeatedly to reset the Ministry's fireplace's wards so as to force Draco to come through the security-laden visitor's entrance. It was known to all that Draco had clearance to floo directly into Potter's office should he want to and especially Dawlish had asserted this to be a 'serious security vulnerability'.

Every time Severus heard them talk, he wondered why Potter had made them members of the Order, and why he kept them as such. Maybe as a cautionary tale. Or as the mouthpiece that would voice out all the doubt and dissent simmering in the diverse group. As a pressure control valve. If it were him in Potter's position, they would be ex-members, or at least re-stationed somewhere - maybe to Kansas, or Alaska. Which was probably why he wasn't in Potter's position, and why that was a good thing, too. Pondering, he blew on his freshly-poured tea. The increasingly hot cup was almost burning his fingertips but we was not willing to let it go.

Another reason for his sleeplessness were the images that danced behind his eyelids whenever he tried to rest. With all the contact with Potter and Malfoy lately, they had become more insistent again and he hadn't been able to bring himself to imbibe any more of the potion he had created back in his days of dwelling in the Muggle flat.

He could tell himself that it was because it upset his digestion – which it did – and caused chronic fatigue to the point of gravely affecting his concentration – which it also did.

But the days of pointlessly lying to himself were long over.

Hot flesh and skin gleaming with moisture, shimmering beads of sweat, shadows dancing on heaving chests, tongues and teeth fighting, hands clawing, pushing, pinning and grasping. He preferred these thoughts over just about all the others he had at his disposal. He just didn't like the fact that they had such a hold on him and still, betimes, caused disconcerting physical reactions. After all, he was almost fifty now, it was unbecoming to still be so – disgracefully carnal and profane. After all those years, the spirit of that night haunted him unwaveringly.

It was quite ironic that, even if an omnipotent deity were to sweep in on the scene and magick away his trying personality, his screwed-up past, his ugly exterior and his lousy reputation and substitute all of it with something passable, the reason for his boiling blood and his racing pulse would still render him socially unacceptable. The one thing that urged him towards that kind of contact with other people – men, but he found that he wasn't fastidious whatsoever – would forever be the one thing that made exactly that impossible. The one memory he treasured most, the memory that had lifted him out of his comatose state and had given him eternal fire within an ember tainted him more than all his other imperfections.

Not that he ever had that kind of contact with anyone. He had chosen seclusion for a number of reasons. Although in his innermost core and during sleepless nights he hoped desperately for a miracle, he knew it would never happen. The omnipotent deity was still long time coming, after all. There was no way for him to get rid of the insurmountable problems for the purpose of finding someone he could- well, touch. And fuck. Touch and fuck exactly like _that_. Preferably with him taking Malfoy's spot but, again, he wouldn't be fastidious in the least.

He sipped some tea and stared out of the window without seeing anything. His mind indulged shamelessly.

The 24th couldn't come soon enough.

~~~  
**TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Plots and other things thicken. A comment would be nice.

**-/Chapter 4/-**

/

"Ah, Snape. Do come in."

He crossed the threshold and stepped into Potter Manor. Potter himself had opened the door, not wearing his Auror purples but simple blacks and dark greys. His greeting had sounded genuinely cheery. And now he was offering to take his coat as he inquired about his advances with the blood-cleansing potion. The most wondrous thing about it was that it didn't feel unnatural in the least. Severus was wary.

"It is laudable to see that the hall is a lot smaller than publicly estimated," he remarked sardonically as he tried not to gape at his surroundings in confusion. _I have been here and it is the same place_, his brain told him, _but at the same time, it is definitely not._

He remembered the place as a forgotten and shunned mausoleum in disguise, full of cobwebs and unidentifiable dark grime. He remembered dust that had sunken into every floor and wall, every rug and curtain, every piece of furniture and every window pane, and that it constantly felt like it would sink into one's pores. The place had been dirty, unpleasant and broken far beyond mending. He remembered that cursed shrieking portrait in the hall, poisoning the very air, and the shuffling worm of a house-elf, pitiful and infuriating at once. He remembered tea that, even when freshly brewed and scalding at first sip, always seemed to be tepid in the centre of the cup.

Now, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had been refurbished from the floor to the ceiling. It was light and airy now, clad in muted shades of earthy brown and white and amber. It was clean, friendly and spacious without being empty. Severus wondered if Draco had simply shown the interior architect pictures of Malfoy Manor and said 'I want the atmosphere of this place to be the exact opposite to _that_.'

Potter had the grace to chuckle at his lame comment and make a show of hanging his coat to give him more time to look around. "The Quidditch Room is on the second floor, actually," he joked. "Let's go to the kitchen, shall we? We have refreshments and the exclusive company of our dear Minister of Magic." He lead the way saying "the kitchen is still in the same place it was before" over his shoulder. Clearly, he was expecting him to follow, which he did.

Despite the fact that even he was more than five minutes early, a good half of the order was already gathered in the kitchen – in its usual place all right, but optically twice as big and physically roomier – and the adjacent dining room. In the middle of the latter, a massive round table was set. Severus chuckled to himself at the symbolism-heavy sight of it, then inconspicuously pulled back into a corner with an alibi-glass and snack and observed, content.

Potter had gone to resume a conversation his arrival had interrupted. The Minister, with all his usual apparel and lines on his face that, in place of grey hair, grew deeper every day as a testimony to his stressful job, and Arthur Weasley – his whole body ever so slightly slanted towards the side on which his leg had been replaced by a prosthesis – immediately included him again. Severus didn't miss how the Weasley patriarch was more than eager to do so while everything about Shacklebolt's body, including that tight, frozen smile, spoke of reluctance. He read Weasley's lips to find out the topic of the conversation – new regulations for the Auror certification – and moved on.

Hestia Jones and Elphias Doge, two veterans, stood together with Amos Diggory and his wife, Catherine. The latter had only become members of the Order in the year after the final battle. It wasn't so clear if Potter had invited them because of their rather influential posts in the Ministry in the Department for the Regulations and Control of Magical Creatures and a deputy member of the Wizengamot, or in honour of their son. Maybe it was a little of either.

Katie Bell and Lee Jordan were discussing something Quidditch-related. Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas stood by and listened, engrossed. Thomas' chest and shoulders were besieged with a plethora of devices, lots of small cogs and wheels that whirred and fizzed, to substitute for his hands that were forever in his trouser pockets. A shiny metal double-W on his sternum left no room for doubt as to the creator of the gadgetry.

George Weasley was sitting on the round table, a piece of parchment before him that was being scribbled on furiously. His older brother Charley was leaning over from behind his chair, looking at his sibling's sketches and pointing things out. Grey hairs were noticeable on both their heads already. There had been too much grief for them to stay entirely young.

Filius Flitwick looked rather unhappy about the fact that Luna Lovegood was explaining something about her necklace's pendant to him. From where Severus stood, said pendant looked a lot like a piece of owl dropping set in brass. Maybe it was. Anything was possible.

Two unknown people, a lanky man with droopy eyes and curly black hair and a woman with a darker complexion, short dark hair and huge dark eyes behind a pair of glasses were sitting together in the corner, leaning toward each other so they could whisper. Even if they hadn't, Severus doubted that anyone would have understood them. The unfamiliar movements of their lips told him that they weren't speaking English. He was slightly intrigued about their presence but knew that he just had to wait and see.

Neville Longbottom was just coming through the door, followed by Potter who had apparently let him in personally as well. His former fellow Gryffindors immediately looked up and greeted him with pats on the back and already endlessly re-used quips that referred to pirates. Longbottom didn't seem to mind much and readjusted his eye patch. His healthy eye strayed over to him for just a split second, but snapped back immediately because one of Thomas' machine arms offered him a glass of refreshment.

Severus looked around some more, his gaze lingering a short moment on every little group, taking in the dynamics and interchange between them, new signs of age, body language, nervous ticks, new clothes and hairstyles – and engagement rings, in the case of Susan Bones -, and the contents of glasses that some members were clinging to a little too tightly, betraying their unease.

From his point of view, he could see both rooms almost entirely, as well as everyone sitting and standing around in them. Draco Malfoy was still absent, he noted.

It couldn't be coincidence that the piece of furniture he was sitting on was be standing right here, in the ideal spot – the one every spy worth his salt would have gone for immediately, the spot allowing for good observation – where he could spend the entire evening without any inconvenience. He would not be sitting at that monstrous table since he wasn't a full member but merely an advisor, after all. He made a mental note to subtly thank the responsibles for their thoughtfulness.

The rest of the Order showed up in quick succession. Aurors Dawlish and Anderson ambled into the room as if it belonged to them. Astoria Greengrass gave the best impression of an interior designer or an estate agent, pointing out the beneficial furniture arrangement and flattering colour coordination of drapes and carpets to her companion Viktor Krum.

Minerva McGonagall showed up exactly on time, citing a meeting with the parents of a problematic student as a reason for her imaginary tardiness and smiled her best motherly smile at him when she spotted him on his settee. The last member to shuffle into the room, obviously trying to attract as little attention as possible, was Aberforth Dumbledore. Severus found it unreasonably hard to look at him – he didn't even look like his brother, not even a little bit, yet still... – and so he didn't.

The conference commenced in a timely fashion. People would say that they were too curious to miss even a minute of this. In reality, they didn't dare to be too late for a meeting with Harry Potter.

Potter repaid the punctuality by addressing the central issue without much preamble, recapitulating again all the information already contained in the six hundred pages of memo everyone had been given and illustrating bits of it with a map of Southern France stretching across the table like a wrinkly tablecloth.

Sometime during the transition of Potters lecture towards a more interactive conversation with just about everyone in the room who had any knowledge on the given topic – especially the two whisperers, introduced as French Aurors Jacques Ferrand Demaris and Mathilde Laurent who knew the reports and the region very well due to having lived there and having written them, respectively – Severus noticed a shift in the air next to him.  
Draco Malfoy had joined them unobtrusively. No one else, with the possible exception of Potter, had seen him yet.

The first thing that startled Severus was how much he had grown. Just like Potter, the pictures in the newspapers didn't manage to capture the true essence of Malfoy. They simply failed to do justice to the sheer increase of physicality and _presence_ Draco had experienced since he had last seen him up close the night that Albus Dumbledore died. There was a calmness and subtle confidence in the way he held his head and his narrow shoulders that made him, if not as imposing as his lover, at the very least striking. Not to mention handsome.

The second thing was how little he looked like Lucius now. The Draco he had known had looked like he would grow up to be a carbon copy of his father – possibly without the charisma that Lucius had used to exude and a tad too pinched in his expression to be as readily attractive. Instead, somewhere between then and now, Draco had taken the Black road, veering more towards his mother's side and his face had lost some of the unconsciously unpleasant angles and the unbalance caused by his high forehead. Or maybe that was just a side effect of his hair, long, very blond and combed back, tucked behind his ears, flowing down onto his chest and down his back. It gave him a slightly androgynous air that Lucius with his aggressive masculinity and chauvinism had never possessed and probably wouldn't approve of.

The young man tolerated his open stare for some time, then turned to him and silently nodded a neutral greeting. Severus merely nodded back, glad that he had chosen to get up some moments ago to better observe the map on the table – something he could now use as an alibi –, and fixed his eyes on Potter again.

Even if the circumstances had allowed for conversation, he wouldn't have been able to say anything. Given that _I'm sorry_ and _Thank You_ and _If only I had known_ were impermissible, his reservoir of things he could've reasonably said to Draco Malfoy was dry.

Malfoy interrupted his pondering by stepping forward at a cue from Potter. Heads turned and mouths were clamped shut. Malfoy ignored it all and talked without hesitation, his voice loud and steady, with the flair of someone used to being exposed to large, basically hostile crowds. Compared to the marathon of tribunals some years ago and the entirety of the Wizengamot and the Ministry staring at him from the stands like shrieking harpies and snarling gargoyles, this had to seem like child's play to him.

"Now that Harry has cleared all the logistics, I would like to direct your attention to the person we presume to be responsible for the aforementioned events. It is common knowledge that Lucius is... well, he is my father. And he was a highly respected member of the Ministry for years – a colleague to some of you –, and lastly a Death Eater, Voldemort's second in command. Many in this room may believe to know him, or to have known him. After sighting and corroborating all the evidence, taking into account my own as well as other people's personal experiences however, Harry and I have both come to rather unpleasant conclusions about him."

What followed were two intersecting tales. One was about a man fatally overreaching himself with a particularly dark art – and his underappreciated, underestimated wife – bringing about his own calamity. The other was about a diary written many years ago by a young man obsessed with the notion of immortality.

By the end of the tales that had become one, a full hour after it had begun, the room was reigned by a shocked silence. The idea that a part of Voldemort – yet human and barely a grown-up, but a part nonetheless – was _still_ alive was almost too much to endure. The one good think about that brutal and costly war they had waged had been its end. Now it turned out that this end hadn't really been final at all.

The gathered Order seemed unable to move, all power gone from the limbs.

/

The people around him exchanged wide-eyed glances as if begging each other for something that could be said to soften the blow. Arthur Weasley rubbed his forehead, fingers wiping his receding hairline. Katie Bell raked her fingers through her hair in a gesture of pure frustration. Susan Bones stared straight ahead, her eyes shining with bitter memories. Minerva McGonagall had her lips pressed so tightly together that they almost vanished.

The idea of something as dark and fundamentally unnatural as uncountable shreds of souls – some of innocent victims, some of vile perpetrators – struggling for supremacy in one body like a pack of rabid bloodhounds in a pit only added to the horror.

"And how does this all fit together with France, might I ask?" Severus spoke into the booming quiet, causing Potter and the rest of the room to look at him. He focussed on those green eyes that had once reminded him of Lily but now were just Harry Potter's eyes. In the first days of his exile he had discovered that looking at Lily's photos in his tattered album rather made him think of her son.

"You mentioned earlier that you have found your hypotheses to form a coherent picture," he said, accessing his classroom voice once more. "In regards to the person of Lucius Malfoy, I'm afraid to say that it all sounds plausible and, in retrospect, explains many an incident. But I fail to see what it is that drives him... or _them_, to be precise... to commit these crimes" - he pointed to the map covering a fair portion of the table, now spiked with pins, marking the sites for killings, maimings, abduction, suspicious occurrences of various sorts, and sightings of suspects, each in a different colour - "in these places. Why France?"

Potter seemed more than a little thankful for his interjection, steering the conversation away from that which the mind baulks to comprehend, and towards more sober facts which was visibly all the audience could handle right about now.

"Tom Riddle was obsessed with Horcruxes, we all know that. But the Horcruxes weren't his first obsession. This we managed to ascertain by corroborating the old entries from the Hogwarts library's lending catalogue about the books he read all those years ago. And we found that his first interest – or at least _an_ earlier interest which he obviously discarded when he came across the Horcruxes and possibly found them to be more suitable – this first interest was another means of obtaining eternal life. He was very much into the story of a grave or a sepulchral stone of a boy who lived in the early 5th century. His grave," he continued as Draco handed him a slim, black leather-bound book, "is part of a French wizarding legend. The boy interred there is said to-"

"Said to be one of the first who try to make a stone- pierre philosophale," Demaris interjected as he had caught on, looking at Laurent for help with the translation.

"A Philosopher's Stone," Draco finished for him.

At Potter's prompt, Laurent, in fluent but odd-sounding English, started to recount a story she had been told by parents and grandparents when she was a child growing up in Grenoble. It was a tale much like the story about the Warlock and his Hairy Heart or the Three Brothers: part legend, part fairy-tale, part lesson for small children who didn't want to sleep yet, and part fundamental truth. Like most other stories, it was poetically tragic, telling of bad decisions made for understandable reasons and revealing the flaws of human nature.

It ended with the young boy, said to be merely thirteen of age, being punished by the gods for his exceeding intelligence and his greed. The cruel gods eventually granted him the knowledge of eternal life he had sought, fought and begged for – after he had died. Yet, due to his astuteness, even Death could not stop him from soldiering on toward his goal of immortality. The knowledge given by the gods enabled him to put together the formula, except for one thing: The last missing ingredient was to be a breath of life - one breath of a living person, the one thing he had no chance to find anywhere in the realm of Death. Thus, with his incomplete formula, he partially came back to life – he was a kind of ghost, a spectre reversed in conception and in a state of impotent suspension.

"It is said that he inhabits the statue guarding his own grave, a crude angel made by his own father. The father was normally a gifted stone carver but so wrecked by grief over his son's death while carving it that this statuette was almost indistinguishable from a fieldstone. Still, the boy's spirit is to this day waiting in that statue for someone to come by and kiss it so he can capture the breath and come back to full life forever," Laurent finished with wistful fondness audible in her voice.

"And Riddle is now searching for that fairy-tale tombstone so he can resurrect this boy who has the knowledge of eternal life," Auror Dawlish clarified. Even though Severus could not see him entirely from this angle he knew that he had his arms crossed over his chest and was rather annoyed at wasting so much of his precious time with French good night stories.

"Pretty much, yes," Potter took the word again. "We have reason to believe that he first read the story in an edition of this," and he held up the book Draco had given him, for all to see, "which was available in the Hogwarts library and borrowed by him several times, for as long as five months at one time, indicating that his interest was truly profound."  
He put the book on the table for everyone to take.

"In the story, a place called Saint Merveilleaux is mentioned. There is no evidence for this place being any more than complete fiction, and we think that Riddle knew that too, once, which is why he eventually gave his quest for the fictitious headstone up in favour of the Horcruxes. But at this point it seems likely that he has lost sight of the line between fiction and reality and possibly just... reacted to the French sound of it."

"Because if we take into consideration that a shred of my father's soul is still present in there somewhere, it seems plausible that Lucius' memories got mixed up in that scrambled brain. You see, there once existed a bijou villa located near Ancelle," Draco leaned over the map and put his finger on a town surrounded by pins, "which belonged to _his_ father, my grandfather, until it was somehow taken over by the Germans during the Muggle's Second World War. It was later razed, probably by the French. So he, Riddle, has forgotten what he once knew – that the legendary grave and Saint Merveilleaux are just that, legends – and is now, due to my father's memories of that Ancelle villa, convinced that both are actually to be found somewhere in this area."

"And due to the fact that he is completely mad, and growing madder with each second because every murder he commits basically adds one to the crowd, he's getting more and more frustrated because he doesn't understand why he can't find the non-existent grave or Saint Merveilleaux. And when he gets frustrated, he kills people and restarts the loop."

"Which would account for the erratic movements," Kingsley interjected with a pointed look at the forest of pins.

"Moreover, we think it is safe to assume that there were moments in which Tom Riddle was lucid, and recently. Lucid enough, anyway, to use his natural charm and persuasive power to recruit new henchmen and to start a veritable operation."

"Which would account for the drastic increase and outspread of incidents," Kingsley finished again.

"The question is," Draco said flatly into the pause, "how do we manage to capture a charismatic, murderous, ruination-bound, ingenious, very schizophrenic madman?" He looked around without meeting anyone's eyes, except Severus', whose gaze he held for a heartbeat or two. He saw a hint of dispiritedness in them. Not surprising, considering that said madman was partially his father _and_ his mother _and_ the bane of everyone's existence.

As discussion started, the order members waking from their stupor one by one, and the attention was diverted from them, a fleeting and almost unnoticeable touch was exchanged between two hands.

Severus spied it and was riveted by it much against his will.

~~~  
**TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M. Very M.

Warnings: Graphic sexual situations and angst ahead.

**-/Chapter 5/-**

/

The ensuing conversation had lasted well into the night, only interrupted by dinner. Quite apart from the fact that ten Order members had eleven different views on how to go about effectively stopping Malfoy Senior/Riddle, there was much debate about French and Italian sovereignty. The two present French Aurors had seemed very inclined, enthused even, to accept British advice – British intervention, not so much.

As the dispute on that particular topic hit a dead end, conversation came back to the curse Lucius had fiddled with to turn himself into a maelstrom for soul debris, then skipped back to the diary and how the soul inside it could have survived the book's destruction and returned to its owner of many years by itself. In the end, McGonagall even enquired further about the French fairy tale, meticulously hunting for every last bit of information that might, at some point, become valuable.

Potter finally broke the gathering up. "We will receive a long-distance firecall from Vladivostok tomorrow. Due to the time shift, my good friend Wladimir and I scheduled it to 7.30 a.m. GMT. I would very much like you to be here by that time to listen to what Wladimir has to say about the magic currently inflicted on Lucius Malfoy because I believe that we should learn as much about the condition he is in as possible. Also, we're going to talk about Monaco tomorrow; everyone who read the papers I sent would probably already have figured out that there're... untoward things going on in that rich little city. I promise it's going to be interesting. Any questions?" He opened his hands invitingly but Severus saw the tired lines that had appeared under his eyes and knew that he was relieved when no one spoke up.

"Since it is already well past midnight and tomorrow's going to be early, everyone who would like to stay here the night instead of going home is welcome to do so. We have a guest room for everyone."

It was probably only his imagination that Potter kept glancing into his direction.

"Especially Mathilde and Jacques, _puis-je vous inviter à passer la nuit ici?_" he asked with the strong accent of someone who knew exactly that one sentence and nothing else in the language. The two French guests nodded nonetheless. "All right, tomorrow at seven thirty it is. I know it's hard but try to get some shut-eye, everyone." Just like in the good old army days, Severus thought sardonically, but no one seemed bothered by the flippant style of his dismissal.

Ten minutes later, the greater part of the gathering had flooed or apparated home. Draco was distributing room keys to the eleven people who had decided to take the offer and stay.

Severus was not entirely sure why he was one of _those_. He wished someone would come and bodily drag him out the front door, but no one did.

When Draco finally came to him, he handed over the key with an expression that was eerily reminiscent of Potter's at the end of their "chance" encounter at Gringott's more than a year ago.

"You'll probably find your way," Draco said, and Severus took a second to realize he was talking about his dorm for the night. "And some nightclothes and a toothbrush on the night table."

Severus put his head on his pillow a quarter an hour later. He had brushed his teeth, showered manually, going through the motions without even consciously feeling the water because he was so lost in thought, dried off magically and shed his normal robes in favour of a black silk pyjama he had found on his bed as promised. He didn't know why he was wearing it, the fabric had just felt too nice not to.

He tried closing his eyes.

They sprung open again. _So maybe that one time I caught Lucius talking to himself, he was actually talking to Narcissa._

He breathed in and out, taking conscious breaths. _The way he held his knife, clutched in an unmoving hand – had it been her inside, trying urge him to stab himself... _themselves_?_

_And then, one day, he had completely stopped being himself._

He forced himself to think of making a sleeping potion. An ounce of water, add two teaspoons of warm milk, a handful of minced forknife root, half a frog's toe and two cubes of brown sugar, stir ten and a half times clockwise-

_Where did the rest of his soul go?_

The thoughts naturally kept on rising in his mind, and they kept racing like the cars on the street he had lived on eight months. On and on, all day, all night.

"Two cubes of brown sugar, heat to fifty seven degrees, ten and a half times clockwise," he whispered into his pillow.

In his head, the mad glimmer in Lucius Malfoy's eyes that had barely hidden the newest, abominable presence inside mingled with the warm, yellow sheen on the moist skin of Potter's back, gleaming like polished china.

/

He turned over on his slightly too soft and generally too large mattress.

He could have sworn that he had been asleep a moment ago, but presently he was wide awake. This frustrating process had been repeating itself for the last, oh, two or three hours now, as his bedside clock told him.

His patience was seriously starting to wear thin. Sleep insisted on evading him.  
"I should have gone home instead," he mumbled tonelessly to himself for the nth time, using the h-word in the loosest of senses.

He boxed the pillow and arranged and rearranged his hair which insisted on falling across his nose, tickling the insides of his nostrils incessantly. Restlessness fluttered in his chest like a small bird and he couldn't comprehend why. The day had been long, his bones and his head were heavy and weary with all the new information. The news hadn't been good. There was yet another fight ahead, against the same villain over again, the future was uncertain yet again. He felt too old for all this. Or maybe he just felt _old_. So why couldn't he close his eyes?

He sat up in bed, breathing deeply, inhaling the foreign scent of bedclothes that weren't his own. He detected something flowery, understated and pleasant, but foreign – not his _own_ and not what he wanted or needed. The cosiness only made it more offensive.

He gingerly felt for the glass of water on the night table, took a sip to swish around in his mouth and slid the glass back onto the table.

It sang for a moment. Like the alarms in his dungeons, alerting him of lust-crazed intruders.

The hairs on his arms stood on end instantly.

Was there a noise?

Severus ceased all movement, halted his breath and willed his heart to calm down so the blood might stop rushing in his ears.

It sounded like a voice. Either very soft or very far away. Maybe someone else was still awake as well, having a conversation somewhere in this enormous house. Or maybe the French woman was talking in her sleep. She did have that haunted look in her eyes, after all. He didn't think her room was anywhere nearby, though. Weren't the women sleeping in the north wing?

Footsteps. Walking away from his door.

Severus swung his bare feet onto the floor, annoyed by the noisy rustle of the duvet as he folded it back and the creaking of the mattress. He tiptoed towards the door, holding his arms out all the while to not bump into something.

It sounded like a laugh. Then, muffled voices again.

The carpet swallowed his footsteps and tickled the arches of his feet and between his toes.

He listened at the door. A murmur. A hollow sound, a bump.

A whisper. _Or maybe just the wind?_

He barely stopped short of pressing his ear to the door.

A sound he had never heard, but oh so familiar.

Severus froze with his hand on the door handle and held his breath again.  
His heart thumped in his chest. _I know what this is._

A moan.

_No, this can't be._

This was just his mind playing tricks with his most desperate desires, he reasoned, the way that minds usually did. It was why people saw Jesus in burnt toast and heard messages – satanic or otherwise – in vinyl records being abused into playing backwards.  
Another moan, soft but more definite now.

_People hear only what they want to hear_, Severus admonished himself, yet against all reason his hand inched the handle downwards unstoppably. The door eased open with a click and a soft, oily yelp, mercifully short.

The air outside on the corridor was colder than inside his room. Severus was immediately very aware of his state of clothing. The silken pyjamas barely protecting him from the chill. Moreover, the fact that the corridor wasn't completely dark but dimly lit and lined with the doors behind which people were currently – hopefully? – sleeping made his insides squirm. He really didn't want to imagine what being caught sneaking down a hallway in pyjamas would do to his reputation but he couldn't help it.

Still, he crept toward the direction from which the thought the sounds emanated – more and more clearly, more pronounced as if they had gained confidence –, careful not to make a sound himself, willing his erratic pulse to stop but not succeeding.

A murmur, like a piece of conversation overheard from behind a wall, impossible to understand, impossible to ignore.

He followed the breadcrumbs that pulled him along irresistibly, all the way to a door at the end of the corridor around the corner. He stopped ten paces from it. The strip of warm, orange light on the carpet immediately told him that it was slightly open.  
Another moan spilled out onto the hallway.

It was unmistakable.

Severus was suddenly drenched. Sweat pricked out of every pore of his body, but his tongue was dry and glued to the roof of his desiccated mouth, the sip of water taken mere minutes ago forgotten completely. _My vow_, he thought for a moment, _I vowed I wouldn't-_ but then yet another wondrous sound reached his ears and made every other, more reasonable thought flee. It seemed to reach down through his entire body, reached straight between his legs and pulled him towards the door. _A dog on a leash. A doll on a string_, he thought. _Look at yourself, Severus._

Instead, he knelt down like the criminal he was, steadied himself on to the doorframe and looked inside with one hungry eye.

Five years, ten months, three weeks and twenty-two days had come to an end.

/

His breath hissed out of him soundlessly in surprise and instant arousal.

Draco Malfoy's back was almost as beautiful as Potter's. It was slimmer in comparison, even when taking into consideration that it belonged to a grown-up instead of a sixteen-year-old. It was composed of lean muscles covered in skin the hue of moonlight with a pastel-coloured tinge, partially hidden by a curtain of long, blond strands of silk. His hair also obscured his face which was turned away from his vantage point, and fell straight down across his shoulders.

His backside, Severus noted, was also very different from Potter's, it was not so round or pronounced, it was small and pointy. Still, it was a very nice backside.

Potter seemed to think so too, since he was currently running his hands slowly, slowly up the underside of Malfoy's thighs with splayed fingers. His feather-light touches lead him further upwards, he cupped those small, firm cheeks ever so gently, massaged them, giving every impression of worshipping every square inch of them.

Draco sighed and tilted his head back as one digit dipped into his cleft.

Potter was on his knees before him, doing unspeakable things, things Severus had never seen done except in a magazine that had been passed around the dorm an eternity ago. He didn't remember very clearly any more but he was certain that the buxom witch with the memorable Marilyn Monroe hair awkwardly winking at him from those stiffened and wavy pages hadn't done _that_ with half as much relish as Potter just did.

Inches of velvety flesh vanished between his lips. He sucked and licked and swirled and bathed Malfoy's stiff prick with a very pink tongue from the tip to the base. When he took the entire length into his mouth, sucking it deep into the back of his throat, his nose nestled into curls of pubic hair, obviously inhaling their scent. Scandalous, wet sucking and slurping sounds emerged which shot, white-hot like lightning, into Severus' groin. Potter's right hand stopped fondling Malfoy's arse and reached up to fondle something else instead, Severus' view blocked by a milky thigh.

Malfoy tangled both his hands in Potter's hair lovingly and murmured indistinct but unmistakably appreciative things. Potter smiled around the cock in his mouth and slowed his movement down even further. He grabbed Malfoy's member by the shaft, pulled away with another wet sound and prodded the slit with a pointed tongue. After long moments of this sweet torture that elicited even sweeter sounds from Malfoy, he redirected his attention to the whole organ again, quickening his pace again. Malfoy sighed in relief and mewled.

Severus watched with rapt attention and didn't think he would have been able to stop doing so even if he had wanted to. And he didn't want to. The pants of his pyjamas were strained now. He couldn't feel bad about that any more than he could feel bad about his unwillingness to stop watching. All he really could do is try and not mewl along with Malfoy and try not to blink so as to not miss a second of this.

"What are you doing there," it suddenly sounded from within the room and Severus felt his heart clench in shock. He had been discovered. _Run!_ his brain screamed vainly but his legs were cramped and useless. Instead, he screwed his eyes shut, as if this might help.

But the words weren't directed at him at all. _How silly_, Severus admonished himself over the thumping of his pulse. He should've been able to tell right away by the tone of voice, all dripping with lust and complacency.

"I quite – oh, nnh – quite distinctly remember – yes-ah – you saying that you had something else in mind for... me tonight," Draco continued, haltingly. His voice hitched at the last word as Potter used his tongue to do something very pleasant to the underside of the tip of his penis, and then he moaned loudly and breathed – so huskily that Severus barely heard it - "If you keep doing this any longer, I'll just come in your mouth."

The mental image of it stoked up the fire in Severus' belly, made it burn hotter than it ever had. His cock twitched and nudged against a definitely wet, sticky spot on the inside of the fabric of his underpants.

Potter whispered a butterfly kiss onto his lover's most delicate patch of skin and mischievously smiled up at his face. "Oh, we can't have _that_ again, now, can we," he growled playfully with a voice made rough by the blowjob he had just given.

As he rose to his full height to stand in front of his lover, to kiss his mouth thoroughly, possessively, and to grab him, lay him on the bed and have his wicked way with him, his glance wandered.

Wandered, just for a fleeting moment, over to the slightly-open door.

It didn't last as long as the blink of an eye but Severus saw it nonetheless. His breath seemed to have frozen solid in his lungs.

_Now_ he'd been caught.

_Potter knows_, he realized. It was beyond question.

_Potter knows._

His heartbeat stopped and then stumbled over itself. Not even in the days of spying on Voldemort had he ever felt a cold, nameless terror quite like this.

He scrambled away from his crouched observation point on all fours, his body suddenly jerking into action even though his calves and feet were entirely bloodless and painfully hollow. He shivered with sweat that had instantly turned icy, and the residue of lust that had suddenly turned into something foul and atrocious. His trousers formed a small tent over his still pulsing shame as he somehow managed to get up. He practically ran down the corridor. He was noisy and he knew it but he couldn't care about any of that, he had to get out of there. Back to his room, close the door, lock it twice. Put on his clothes, get away from- from all of it. From Potter and his knowing glance and the satisfied and amused smile that hid in the corner of his talented mouth.

His knees went weak at the thought of ever seeing Potter, or even Malfoy, or anyone, ever again. Just thinking about anyone looking at him made him feel like he was suffocating.

_They will look at me and they will know._

Everything he had worked for, the distant but definite respect he was shown, the small, orderly life he had in accordance with what Dumbledore's will demanded he had, the peace they let him have despite all he had done, gone, gone, smashed to pieces because- only because – he gasped for air, feeling dizzy – his own body had betrayed him, the lust in his soul had betrayed him.

_How could you, Severus? _He didn't even know if it was Dumbledore's voice, or his mother's, or maybe Lily Evans', or Minerva's, or his own. Maybe it was all of them rolled into one.

"What- perversity," he spat and sobbed involuntarily. He was aware that he was still shaking all over. He sank down unto the edge of his bed gingerly.

_Saying it out loud is the first step on this long road to redemption_, the grey-haired Auror had said in the interrogations before his final hearings. Dosed with Veritaserum as he was, he had had no choice but to answer the same questions over and over and over again, recounting the same gruesome stories dozens of times. What he had found hadn't been redemption, but merely that even the most awful words when said too often would eventually lose their meaning, their syllables surrendering their cohesion.

_Saying it out loud is the first step on this long road to redemption. _What he wouldn't give for that to be true right now. He would confess his sins until he was hoarse, if only to make that writhing, ugly feeling he recognized as almost pubescent desire go away. Desire that had wreathed itself around his ankles, wrists and neck and made him a marionette. Where did the strings lead? To nimble fingers that caressed Malfoy's skin- Potter smiled his pleased smile over Malfoy's shoulder. All at once he looked so much like his father that Severus felt gall rise into his mouth.

Next, there was a loud bump at the door.

He opened his eyes, and opened them again. He was immediately upright and felt for his wand in panic reflexively.

Actually, it was a knock, followed by a "Severus, we'll start in ten minutes".

Through the wood it wasn't discernible who the caller was. Not that it mattered much. Severus heard but wasn't capable of understanding. It took him several seconds to remember who and where he was.

He was sitting up on a foreign bed, was looking around a foreign room and clutching his clammy forehead as his brain slowly sorted things out.

Then, he remembered last night.

His stomach flipped and clenched as the whole despicable scene replayed in his mind. It finished with a loop of the millisecond in which Potter's look had grazed the slightly open door. Severus felt like dry heaving as he went through the motions of getting dressed and presentable.

Standing in front of a mirror, he arranged his cuffs. Then he arranged his robes. Then he tried to arranged his face and his poise.

_I could still leave._

His reflection, with dark shadows that stood out shockingly on a face the colour of chalk, gave him a pointed look. There was some scorn in that look, and cynicism. Also, an ill-concealed amount of pity, topped with a generous helping of defeat. _Severus. Don't be ridiculous._ In his head, his admonishing voice always sounded like a part of Albus Dumbledore had seeped into it.

"I could tell myself that it was only a dream?" It was just a suggestion.

Reflection-Severus looked back at him as if to say '_That_ we can actually do.'

/

He entered the kitchen that was as crammed as the day before but much more subdued. People were mainly standing around by themselves, tea or coffee cup in hand, staring into space, lost in their own depressing thoughts. In a way, it was good to know that others had had nightmares, too, and not slept nearly long enough. Even if he himself didn't, his misery loved company like all other people's.

Potter was already in the dining room, preparing a fireplace located at the far side of the wall that hadn't been there the day before for the long-distance floo call from halfway around the world.

Severus caught his eye for a moment by accident, instantly feeling hot and cold all over. His stomach clenched painfully.

But the moment passed quickly and there was nothing in that look. _Nothing_ at all. Potter seemed better rested than the entire Order put together, if slightly annoyed that something with the floo connection was trickier than he had hoped for. He kept combing his hand through his hair, making it stick out in all directions, windswept and interesting and only slightly deranged.

_He seems too well-rested for having spent the entire night fucking, at any rate..._

His mind wrapped itself around the idea that it _had_ merely been a dream after all. A very vivid nightmare born out of his perverse, hidden nature that had been awakened to its full power by the proximity of the objects of his desires. There was also the distinct possibility that this was his subconsciousness' way of dealing with yesterday's bad news, a tactic of distraction and regression into memories. It had dealt him a pleasant dream born of a memory to cushion the blow.

He nipped from his cup. His newborn hope tasted scalding and bitter, like the coffee.

In his entire life he had harboured hope like this three times.

He had hoped that the look Lily Evans was giving him meant something.

He had hoped that the look she was giving James Potter meant nothing.

And he had hoped that Draco Malfoy would never actually get the opportunity to kill – and to falter to kill – Albus Dumbledore, just before grasping Narcissa Malfoy's slender wrist that night at Spinner's End.

He turned to talk to Minerva and allowed himself to be soothed by her slightly rumpled appearance, her sighing about the early hour and the expression on her face, tired, drawn, and completely unknowing, non-judgemental, unsuspecting.

/~~~~~~~

**TBC**

_Comments would be very appreciated._


	6. Chapter 6

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Virtually none, this time.

**-/Chapter 6/-**

/

Potter's "good friend Wladimir" turned out to be half-human, half-lesovik. He was the child of a human woman and a Russian woodland spirit – sideburns and horns and all, probably hooves, too, but the floo didn't allow for checking.

This not only explained why he had such a frighteningly extensive and detailed knowledge of everything spirit-related, but why, in a cooperative effort, he and Potter had managed to create a floo connection between the usually self-contained and isolated FURNACE (Floo Union Reliably Networking All Chimneys of England) and a pathetic little open camp fire somewhere in the area of Vladivostok on the other side of the globe. Severus suspected that no one in this room, with the exception of Potter himself, even had an idea about the magnitude of magic required for this feat.

The conversation only survived for half an hour. It turned out that, like a full-blood, half-lesoviks were also rather antisocial creatures who were mainly indifferent about all things human, especially when they thought that there was nothing in it for them.

It was very possible that this particular half-lesovik simply had a particularly short attention span. He got distracted by Potter's mad hair twice within ten minutes. When Kingsley addressed him, he went into a veritable fit, causing him to start ranting in Russian about how someone burnt as black as a briquette could only be still alive and able to talk due to evil sorcery and was therefore surely in league with Von Rotbard. "That bastard!" Wladimir cursed and spat on the ground which made the fire flare and cough up sparks.

As the rest of the Order tried to systematize the newly obtained, chaotic knowledge, Severus found his eyes getting increasingly heavy and blurry and his thoughts slugging through his tiredness. Apparently Minerva had noticed, for she suddenly stood before him, holding out a cup of steaming tea which he accepted with a thankful nod.

The tea's aroma took his mind away from the conversation and back to his old supply closet in the dungeons of Hogwarts. His well-tuned olfactory sense fanned out the spectrum of odours that rose from the warm china in his hands. It found an array of ordinary herbs, rosemary, thyme, melissa, lemon balm and butcher's broom and was that a little peppermint in the mix?, as well as some magical herbs, first and foremost a strong dash of Mandrake's hair and Alihotsy bark that almost overpowered the faint, delicate bouquet of Turquoise Tortoise mushroom. There were some other interesting ingredients and most of them made him think of brewing a Potion on a rainy Saturday afternoon. He suppressed a wistful sigh.

The first sip of the tea was akin to a loud wake-up call. Not only did the ingredients imbue his every cell with their energy. His tongue also told him that there was something unknown in this infusion. Something he hadn't even smelled. He sipped again, swishing the hot beverage around on his tongue with his brow furrowed in concentration.

He sipped and sniffed several more times, trying to discern that unknown ingredient but had to accept that, whatever it was, its taste became more and more elusive the colder the tea grew. His cup was empty before he had managed to solve this mystery.

Unnoticed by all, he rose from his comfortable settee while the conversation about Lucius' spell still went on. Wide awake now as he was riding on the first wave of theine, he stepped into the kitchen to investigate.

He struggled to open the drawers soundlessly without knowing exactly why he felt like he was doing something forbidden. Again. For the second time within six or seven hours. He pushed some plates aside and cursed under his breath as the glasses as their clinked against each other, occupying a spot they never had in the bad old days.

"What are you doing?"

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end within the second. A feeling of déjà-vu hit him so hard that it made him dizzy. He clutched the edge of the counter for a second to gain control over himself.

Instead of wheeling around like a felon caught red-handed, he managed to turn around to face Draco at a reasonable pace, willing himself to look and sound relaxed.

"There is something in my tea." That sounded vaguely disconcerting, so he attempted to clarify, "some spice or herb. I can't tell what it is." Judging by Draco's raised eyebrows, this wasn't much better. "It's not to be rude or inappropriately paranoid, you understand – it tastes very fine indeed, but it's... I would simply like to know what it is," he explained as puzzlement gave way to mild amusement on Draco's face.

"Potionmaker's curiosity, nothing more," he finished lamely and chided himself silently for apologising. Making sure what one consumed was perfectly fine, and the tea canister had always been up there on the third shelf to the left before and anyway-

"For Merlin's sake, don't let me stop you then, Severus," Draco said gently, having seen his scowl, and smiled. His face seemed much more prone to smiles now than in the past. There even were fine lines around his mouth now he hadn't possessed yet in the Hogwarts days, carved by smiling and laughing frequently. Severus wondered about that, tried to imagine these lines on Lucius', or even Narcissa's face and failed, and accepted the use of his first name without a pause. Like Potter opening the door and taking his coat whilst doing small talk, Malfoy calling him by his given name just seemed right.

Draco poured himself a large cup of coffee – apparently that's what he had come into the kitchen for when he found Severus going through his cabinet.

Severus had located the caddy he had been searching for and sorted through some pinches of dried herbs on his open palm. Just like he had thought, he encountered great quantities of thyme looking like greyish shrapnel, crumpled green leafs of melissa, ash-coloured ringlets of smoked Mandrake's hair, and there were bits of lemon balm and butcher's broom and-

"Let me know what your findings are, regarding the mystery ingredient, all right?" Malfoy smiled yet again and departed towards the sitting room, cup in hand. Halfway to the door he suddenly added "Remember, curiosity is always a good thing."

Severus spun around with a jerk this time, making the handful of tea leaves rain onto the floor and sprinkle his shoes, but Malfoy was already back in the dining room and vanished behind Joel Anderson's broad back.

Minutes passed until he was composed enough to follow.

/

The second day went by fairly quickly. The topic of souls and soul magic was thoroughly discussed until after lunch. After this, Potter gave them information about the involvement of Monaco, just as he had promised the evening before.

The unofficial reports included in the seven hundred pages of reading material and their content as well as some other news from French authorities – both Muggle and Wizarding – pointed to the fact that Riddle, with his own suasive personality and Lucius Malfoy's attractive face, had indeed gathered people around himself. People who had now started raiding towns on his behalf.

One of these people, an Italian-born Squib by the name of Tommaso di Quattrini, was of particular interest. Severus remembered his name mentioned in the internal reports once or twice, although nothing else about him had stuck. Draco introduced him in a short presentation, holding up the picture of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, tanned, moustachioed man in his mid-forties, slightly overweight and sprouting the beginning of a surplus chin, flashing a smile that revealed a gold tooth – so stereotypically Italian that it actually hurt to look at him. He was just one red, lumpy hat short of being Super Mario.

The only son to a filthy rich Italian Wizarding family, husband to a well-known Italian Muggle television actress, father of two already grown children who were involved in something called 'facebook', a frequent visitor to the Monegasque branch of Gringotts as well as the local Ministry of Magic, di Quattrini appeared to qualify perfectly for the spot of Riddle's Second in Command.

It was well-known that he was intellectually and financially interested in all sorts of dodgy expeditions – many of them with the apparent aim to somehow ignite the inert magic he believed was lying dormant within his talentless body. Whenever he wasn't occupied with kooky ancient or not-so-ancient rituals, exotic Thai or Inuit or Caribbean ointment therapies or singing bowl sessions or sexual activity timed with the planetary movements, and mythological stories, none of which seemed to have provided a cure for his Squibism so far, he meddled with Monaco's Wizarding politics. Just last month had seen him elected Undersecretary of Monetary Matters but it was public knowledge that he was aiming for becoming the first Squib elected for Council in February.

It was only reasonable to assume that Riddle/Lucius had somehow encountered the man and ensnared him with promises of Magic and Immortality in order to profit from his political and financial leverage and his access to any sort of institution, any sort of social circle, any sort of information. An innocuous, well-known face and the complete lack of menace were the only things that Riddle/Lucius didn't have.

The afternoon slipped into evening while theories were laid out as to how big exactly their operation may have grown, judging mainly by the damage it had done, and what their trajectory might be. The later the evening got, the more the actions of the Second Circle – that's what Draco had dubbed the undefinable group around Riddle and di Quattrini, and the name stuck – seemed like a scavenger hunt for something that didn't really exist. With a delusional schizophrenic as a leader, a desperate and harebrained second in command, and the two of them affirming each other it was likely that the other members were not yet aware of the fact that they were hunting for a place in a fairy tale, and that their reward would ultimately prove to be equally imaginary.

From the Muggle newspaper reports and the Ministry Department's reports, they were mainly scavenging the area around Ancelle, but spread out as far as Monaco and Nice. Whenever a Muggle or a witch or wizard happened across their path, the Second Circle's partially mad leader would order this unlucky person to be tortured for information they couldn't possibly give, or sacrificed at the non-existent altar of the nameless fairy tale boy.  
It all sounded frighteningly like Lucius and awakened memories and images he had buried some time ago. Not deep enough.

Potter dismissed the Order shortly after eleven this time, requesting everyone to come in at 8.30 tomorrow. Before Severus pulled back to his room for the night, he overheard a conversation between Potter and Shacklebolt. They agreed to get a portkey to Monaco at once and brief the Ministry there – unofficially for now, as to not generate needless buzz that might reach di Quattrini's, and Riddle's, ears.

They left five minutes later and couldn't be expected back any time soon.

Severus breathed a sigh and couldn't say if it was purely made of relief or if it was tainted by wistfulness that wasn't allowed for him.

/

It was early in the morning when he found himself awake. He checked the bedside clock – 5:04 it said – took a sip of water, threw a mild cooling charm at his duvet and sheets which had heated up too much for comfort and made his skin clammy with sweat. He lay back down.

He hardly dared to breathe. He strained his ears.

"Stop it," he admonished himself and rolled over onto his side, pulling the blanket up over his ear. The more desperately he tried to banish the thought from his head, the more it grew until it took up every square inch.

His heartbeat echoed in his pillow. It sounded like footsteps taken through slightly frozen snow. Left, right, left, right.

Walking. Walking more quickly.

Then running.

He sat up with a start.

The door to his room was open. He could see its outline in the dim light falling in through the windows. The black slit looked like a wound, or an abyss to stare and fall into.

Before he knew what he was doing he was on his feet and the chill of the brass door handle bit into his palm.

_Close the door._

He looked down to the back of his hand, white, wan, _an old man's hand_, ghostly in the dim half-light. Cold air wafted over his toes and ankles.

_If you close the door, it will end._

He held the handle in a death grip.

_Curiosity is always a good thing._

"No," he whispered soundlessly and repeated "no" as the weakness in him drowned every ounce of reason, his treasured caution, vestiges of decency, his last remnants of pride he had clung to so tightly – everything.

He would never be able to close that door. Not now, not ever.

It almost felt like relief. He assumed that it was just shock and adrenaline. Cut off a man's badly twisted leg and he'll likely feel relieved, too. _At first._

This time he didn't sneak through the corridor. He walked quite normally instead – as normally as he could, barefoot and nervous – because somehow it was sure that no one would be awake and no one would hear or see him.

He stopped five paces before their bedroom door.

There were soft noises that made him shiver inside once he recognized them. He heard the kind that lips and tongues made when they touched, the whisper of palms that gently stroked over skin, of fingers that combed through hair possessively, of teeth that grazed collarbones and left their marks. They told of two warm bodies that moved against each other and with each other.

More than anything, though, there was breathing. It was loud and heavy, open-mouthed and utterly shameless and one of the most attracting things Severus had ever heard.

There was an undercurrent of soft whispers, cooing and sighing, threats and promises, a meaningful conversation between lovers that could only be fully understood by the two of them.

All these noises flooded out and washed over him generously and unhindered for the door was wide open.

There was no place to hide this time, no place to hunker down and peep in from surreptitiously.

There was also a piece of clothing laying by the door, neatly folded, exactly in the spot where he had crouched yesterday. Severus recognized it as Potter's cloak of invisibility and went rigid with comprehension.

~~~  
**TBC**


	7. Chapter 7

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Well, this is a naughty one. Honestly, don't read it if slash and explicitness aren't your cuppa.  
If they are your cuppa: Please enjoy and be aware that there's... uh... headier stuff yet to come.

**-/Chapter 7/-  
**

/

A bidding. Barefaced, unambiguous, graceless – also a decrial of his perversion and yet another plain sign of Potter's insurmountable dominance. It made him falter and recoil.

He reached out for it like a child would for forbidden candy. There was only one chance to see exactly how those noises happened, one chance to appease his craving, and if it should be on Potter's terms and for Potter's disport, if he had to join this rigged game whose rules he was unfamiliar with and which was designed for him to lose – if it meant debasing and disgusting himself again – _so be it. _He had lost this battle and signed this dirty contract at his own door already.

He swept the hood over his head. It was so wide and large that it fell all the way down past his chin. The cloak that had been heavy in his hands was almost weightless on his shoulders. He looked down on himself, but through the loose weave he could only see the carpet where his legs and feet should be. Satisfied and slightly sick with self-loathing, he took two shaky steps until he was completely embraced by the soft light from inside the room. His eyes took in what was now unobstructed. In plain sight.

Potter was seated on the foot end edge of his bed. He was partially undressed, his upper body was naked and his scarlet Auror robes lay rumpled behind him on the mattress, like he had just taken them off. Or had them forced off. He was still wearing a tie which served Draco as a leash to hold him by and pull him close and ever closer.

Malfoy was straddled on his lap, gloriously nude, pressing his middle into Potter's, undulating against him with graceful slowness, with short bouts of more frantic movements in between when he was too desperate for friction.

The kiss they were lost in, a sloppy, devouring meeting of lips, tongues and teeth, had Severus engulfed in flames. There was something about those salacious slurping and licking and popping noises, something about the sight of glistening tongues vigorously being sucked into foreign mouths that took control of his hand and steered it to his own crotch.

There was no rule that said he _couldn't_ and the fact that he _shouldn't_ only made it more urgent. He felt himself harden through the fabric and bit back a groan.

Potter was pushed back by the shoulders until he lay flat on his back in the debris of his Auror robes. He propped himself up again by the elbows to observed his naked lover's every move as Malfoy slid off him and onto the floor.

Draco gave the impression that opening Harry's belt, the button and the fly was akin to opening a wonderful present, the sort of present one unwrapped slowly, whose gift wrap one kept intact so as to enjoy the anticipation to the fullest. When the fly was finally open, instead of pulling those pants down and freeing the cock inside that was already creating a very visible bulge, Malfoy turned to Potter's shoes and untied them with great care. It made Potter groan in obvious frustration. Undeterred, Malfoy slid off one boot after the other with deliberation, then one sock after the other, and only then, after kissing his lover's mouth thoroughly again as if to reward his patience, did he help shed the last two items of clothing.

With a sigh of relief Potter was finally also completely undressed. The cock that had sprung free was lying on his belly in all its glory. It was engorged as expected, a pleasant shade of dark pink with a lighter-coloured tip that glistened wetly, fair-sized and -shaped, slightly curved, its base concealed by a nest of wiry black hair. Draco studied it, appreciated its sight just like Severus did, then slithered on top of his partner and scattered kisses over his bare body, starting from his throat and slowly working his way downward. Harry hissed and bit his lip when his nipples were first kissed, then licked, sucked and finally bitten gently, first the left, then the right one. He sniggered softly when Draco kissed his way downwards to his belly button, obviously ticklish, and tried to keep the blond strands of hair from sweeping over his sensitive skin.

Rather than considering the desperate cock at last, Draco slighted it and moved further down, crouched on the floor again, positioned himself between his legs and tended to his lover's balls. He weighed them in his fingers with supreme gentleness, caressing the wrinkly skin and covered them with butterfly kisses. Harry threw his head back with a moan, equal parts pleasure and frustration, his fingers grasping at the sheets around him and bunching them up.

"Draco, will you please-" he started with a strained voice through gritted teeth, gasped, repeated, "please justaah-" He moaned because Draco had just wrapped his lips around one of his testicles and suckled at it.

"Yes, darling?" Draco asked, playfully and innocently as if he hadn't just had one of his balls in his mouth. "Do speak up." He crawled back onto the mattress, positioning himself right over his lover, eye to eye, expectantly.

Potter reached up with one hand and touched that sinful mouth smirking down at him. Severus fought the urge to step into the room to see what exactly he was doing, to see clearly what it looked like when Potter slid the pad of his thumb over Malfoy's moist lower lip.

"No foreplay for your benefit tonight, then," Potter growled and Malfoy nipped at his thumb, holding its tip in his teeth and nudging it with his tongue. "Enough with the teasing. You've earned yourself an unprepared fucking." At the last word, his left hand came up to grab his arse roughly, causing Malfoy to let go of his finger and throw his head back with a sharp gasp.

There was a wicked smile on his face when he stared his lover in the eye again and replied, "Just what I wanted."

Severus forced himself to bite the inside of his cheek and closed his eyes for a second, his hand closing in hard over his penis. He didn't want to come yet although he could have. What he saw and what he heard, it felt like a roll of thunder in his veins. His thighs were shaking.

He breathed in and out twice and listed the ingredients for Prante's Slow Motion Potion – in reverse order of their addition – before he dared to look again.

A jar of lube had been brought into the game. With his arms crossed behind his head Harry observed Draco closely who was liberally applying the lubricant to his cock, giving it the attention it had been denied at last.

Then, his gaze strayed again and eventually fixed itself on the open door.

This time, it wasn't fleeting at all. What felt like eye contact – even though, Severus reasoned, it was impossible since he was still invisible – lasted several long seconds that seemed to stretch into unbearable minutes.

He felt naked, raging boner and all, and so, so guilty. They weren't minors any more but that didn't make his actions any less damning. He ground his teeth and fought against a renewed urge to puke or to curse himself loudly and scream and rage. _Why didn't I close the damned door? How could I be so debile? Why wasn't I able to-_

A smile spread over Potter's face just then.

It jarred and collided with these thoughts and silenced them all at once.

Into the quiet there stepped an epiphany which Severus struggled to accept because it seemed too gracious. After all, he had learned that when things seemed too good to be true, they usually were.

This smile – which wasn't like James Potter's condescending sneer at all and wasn't anything like Lily Evans' apologetic and pitying smile either – this smile seemed to _ask him_ to be there. It was unsure. It was partly wish, partly demanding invitation, partly uncertainty, partly avidity- It was _bashful_. And lustful.

Severus realized there and then that this wasn't all about humiliation and demonstration of power.

He had assumed that he was here because Potter – and Malfoy as well, surely – enjoyed making a right fool out of him and driving him towards lunacy. He had thought that it might possibly their private game of theirs, luring him out of bed, making him an abject slave of his carnal desires, just to see if they could. He had assumed it was revenge for all those horrible hours of Potions Class, for all the bitter animosity, possibly for the whole Remus Lupin/Sirius Black chapter, and for those long months in which Potter must have thought that he had willingly killed Albus Dumbledore.

Considering all his unpleasantness and his duplicity it was only reasonable that this should be his punishment – inducing him to punish, abase and utterly despise himself so that the intensity of his self-loathing might, for once, match the level of the hatred that other people felt for him.

It had all been a false assumption.

He was here right now because, purely and simply, Potter got off on this.

_He likes it. _His breath caught.

_He wants to be watched by me._

For years he had carried this burden around with him like a dislocated joint that had refused to be reduced properly. In dark hours, it had popped back out again to give him pain and paralyse him.

This time it was reset with an almost audible and definite click.

He felt his back straighten a bit.

/

Draco Malfoy got that unprepared fucking he had craved for. Severus watched Potter's lube-dripping cock sink into his arse inch by inch, guided by Malfoy's hand. Malfoy impaled himself gingerly, willing his tight muscle to relax and admit his lover. His smooth thighs trembled with effort despite Potter's support until he was finally seated and filled completely.

Potter, with all of his attention away from his audience and back to his partner, murmured encouragements and visibly fought against the urge to move his hips and plunge into tight heat again and over again. Malfoy murmured back, his talk was mostly groans and deep breaths, all of it half an octave higher than usual, a testimony to the physical strain and the arousal fighting for dominance.

At long last, they began to move. First it was only Draco pushing himself back up only to sink back onto Harry's prick again with a rocking motion of his pelvis, very slowly but then gathering speed quickly, accompanied by a string of swearwords interspersed with _yes_ and _god_ and _so_ _good_. Harry's murmurs grew more insistent and more impatient until he couldn't bear to lie still any more.

The moment that he seized Draco's slim hips and pushed his cock upward and into him with vigour, Draco's cry of pleasure and Harry's groan of relief and raw sexual greed drowned out the small sigh that, despite every effort, fell from Severus' lips. He felt warm droplets of his semen seep through the fabric while his penis jolted and wept.

He breathed heavily and shuddered. He felt wide awake. He was alive.

/

Everything that happened after that moment that night was a bitter-sweet symphony of sounds and pictures and feelings.

Sweet, because it was simply beautiful to behold. The two men before him knew one another with an intimacy that was obvious and staggering. The scene he had witnessed in the dungeons years ago, treasured so dearly that it had almost worn thin and faded, was so very different comparison, featuring the same two people who were entirely different now. They played each other masterfully rather than fucking mindlessly like they had back then – even though that undeniably had its appeal as well – and coaxed every single ounce of lust and pleasure out of their every second together. Moreover, it all happened right before Severus' eyes, at a comfortable distance and from a very pleasant viewpoint and angle. And with something that could be described as their blessing.

On the other hand, it was bitter that it wasn't a video that he could stop. What he saw was not like one of those clips he had seen on that Muggle-invented "internet"-thing – he had tried those once – in a desperate hour – but soon had to admit that they weren't what he was searching for. The pictures had always turned rotten in front of his eyes the moment he was done and it had made him feel wretched and filthy inside.

He had been able to press pause on them, though.

He felt that he could have done with more time to recuperate from his first orgasm and all the emotions that had accompanied it. This way, all this beautiful play was wasted on some level. All he could do was to try to drink it all in and etch it into his unforgetting memory for... later use.

Another dash of bitterness was added by the thought that, in just a few days' time, this would all be over. The meeting would be over, he would possibly be deployed to southern France along with several others of the Order and after that – if there was an "after that" for him – he'd be back in his three-room flat, back to work, back to everyday life and never see 12 Grimmauld Place from the inside ever again.

And his own god damn bed would still be cold.

For a brief moment he felt a strong, new kind of hatred for the two men before him. They had lured him here, had him enjoy their show for a few nights, give him a sample of all that which he would never have for himself. As it turned out, it possibly still _was_ a punishment – just more elaborate and malicious than he had first envisaged.

After that moment had passed, a calmness overcame him. This was not the time to be bitter or reigned by envy. This was a gift, as undeserved and unexpected as it was splendid and perfect, and he couldn't allow himself to taint it with his own soreness of heart.

All he could do was to feast his eyes on Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy's lovemaking and try his hardest to ban thoughts about the future for once.

He almost succeeded.

~~~  
**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: It takes a certain disposition to be into the stuff that you are (or maybe are not) about to read. There are some seriously weird things happening. Sexual things. Be warned (in this, admittedly, vague manner)!

**-/Chapter 8/-**

/

The days grew long. Outside the windows, English autumn held the world in a grey, clammy and altogether displeasing grip that got colder and darker as November approached, and night came earlier every day. It was the talks among the members of the Order of the Phoenix that seemed to stretch further and further – often beyond breaking point and then some – as Potter and Shacklebolt devised a very complex strategy with which this still very vague entity of Riddle/Lucius' Second Circle could be tackled.

Potter's approach was to be meticulous and, most of all, not secretive. They considered eventualities for hours on end, spun ideas out of wild guesswork, and Potter made his plans accordingly, taking advantage of every single member's knowledge and strengths, taking into account every interjection and opinion.

To Severus, it mainly looked like this was Potter's attempt at doing things the way he would have wanted Albus Dumbledore to do them years ago by the way of slightly overreaching his goal. He knew that the old man's secrecy had come at a cost and Potter obviously wasn't willing to make the same mistake again.

By the end of day three, a dining room wall was plastered with pictures – many taken by Muggle security cameras, or cropped from newspapers, most of them in grainy greyscale and from a high angle – of people who had some sort of connection to the Second Circle. Possible members hung on the left of the wall, Tommaso di Quattrini's grinning visage among them. Victims hung to the right, their number sadly large, their location and manner of death noted below. Unclear or unnamed person's pictures were strewn in the middle between them. Several of the pictures had names and further information added. Some were connected by a black thread.

As a dismissal, Potter assigned homework to several Order members, asking Anderson, Doge, Jones, Lovegood and the two French guests to collaborate with the English Ministry Department of Multilateral Intelligence and collect information on several of the people whose pictures lingered in the middle. While the room emptied, George Weasley stayed behind and offered to establish contact Fleur Delacours who, despite merely being almost his sister-in-law once, still counted as a blood relative. This time it was Malfoy who offered to take a portkey with him right away to "help deal with the French", leaving everyone to guess if he was referring to the language or the people.

The glance Severus got from Potter bade him to be patient. He caught it as he walked up the stairs to his room while Weasley, Malfoy and Potter himself. crossed the hall toward the front door. Or perhaps that was just what he wanted to see.

A long, hot shower and the recent lack of rest had him deeply and dreamlessly asleep for seven hours straight. He woke, very slowly, at six thirty.

Even though the ritual of getting up and walking down the hall towards that open door could have had traits of a routine already, he felt nervous all over. It was a slightly more agreeable kind of nervousness today he noted when he slid the Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders.

This time, there was hardly any sound at all. It was also darker than it had been before, the lights were dimmed so far that he could hardly make out anything at first.

When his eyes had accommodated slightly, two shapes became visible. They were lying on the bed in an embrace so close and tangled that they melded into one. A blanket hid their legs up to their knees.

His heart sank a bit when he realized they were sleeping.

Again, discontent welled up inside him. _Why put the cloak by the door then? Why open the door in the first place?_ Feeling inexplicably let-down, he made to leave when there was a movement and a sigh so soft that he didn't know if he had really heard or only imagined it.

He blinked and squinted but his eyes wouldn't perform miracles for him.

There was only one way to get what he had come for.

The threshold lay before his invisible feet. After all the lines he had been pulled over by Potter like a stubborn and spooked hippogriff these past few days, this one was only his to cross. He sensed the pointed absence of spells or charms on him – something he still suspected had to do with that horrendous experience on his first night in this house – and realized that the tingling feeling inside his stomach was nothing but his very own, unadulterated curiosity. It was a warm, dancing flame that had sprung out of the live piece of coal he had carried with him those five years, a fire that belonged to him and him alone.

With his eyes fixed on the two men in the half-light, he took a step and was inside the room.

The air was different. It smelled of skin and detergent, musk and sleepy cosiness, the smell of recently washed bedclothes that were slept-in and still warm.

Potter and Malfoy were only a few steps away from him now. He could see more details now and revelled in the sight of two attractive, naked men lying entangled. Malfoy was on his back, his hair forming a dark silver corona around his head, while Potter lay on the side, half next to him, half on him, his face buried in the nape of his lover's long, white neck.

The movement he had seen was that of Malfoy's hand languidly gliding up and down Potter's side, hip and right thigh. He hadn't been close enough to see both their eyes moving madly behind their closed eyelids and their lips twitching, rosy tongue-tips darting out now and then. From the doorway it had been impossible to catch that faint scent, an odd mixture of vanilla and rain and resin.

They were not sleeping. This was a shared daydream.

They were having sex with each other in their connected minds.

The first and last time he had heard of this was in sixth grade, when an imposing-looking tome titled 'The Wizard's Complete & Illustrated Guide to Carnality' had fallen into his hands during his research for a Herbology assignment. It had been late, he had been virtually alone in the library and his pubertal self had been like all the other pubertal boys that age in that particular area of life. He couldn't resist the temptation and scanned the book, which had been written in the language of Chaucer and a very angular script on dirty brown vellum. Solely for the illustrations promised in the title, naturally.

Inside, he found illustrations various and sundry, all right. He would especially regret looking at a very lifelike cross-section of a uterus shedding its endometrium later that night.

One of the pictures – the one he would later share with seventh year prefect John Blocksburg for reasons he couldn't comprehend any more but certainly had to do with a sixteen-year-old's idea of contraband and esteem – was that of two very naked, very curvy women lying flat on their backs next to each other. They were shown in close-up from the foot end of their bed so that the most interesting parts of their anatomies were laid out to the viewer for close and detailed inspection.

They would appear to be sleeping at first, bosoms rising and falling slowly, but after a few moments of watching, one woman's hand would, as if drawn on a string, slide between the other one's thighs and the spectator would lose sight of her middle finger as it dipped into thick pubic hair and bulging folds of her paramour's moist labia.

Severus remembered their heads moving slightly from side to side on their pillows, their fingers and toes twitching as if they were in a very vivid dream. He remembered sweat collecting, legs spreading even further, hips jutting, nipples and clits stiffening and swelling and chests beginning to heave rapidly as their feverish illusion brought them to climax. He remembered Blocksburg commenting on the allegedly too small amount of "juice" while he stared transfixedly at the page with his lips slightly parted.

"Impossible vision shared in twain" or something ominous like that had been the subtitle in an illegible script. He was also quite sure that the text surrounding the illustration - teeming with the word "harken", for some reason – had been a warning against using this particular magic. Possibly because it involved hallucinogenic substances, intoxication and tripping and addiction.

He hadn't read it. Neither had Potter or Malfoy, apparently. Judging from the small, delighted noises coming from Potter in particular, there wasn't much sense in advising them against it in any case.

Severus wandered slowly around the room, around the bed, daring to come so close that the hairs on his skin tingled. In his mind, he made up a scenario that matched the sounds and movements he could hear and see.

In this scenario, it was Potter was on the receiving end.

He was pilloried, bent over at the waist so that his body made a right angle. He was blindfolded with a dark green cloth, his hands were grasping air on both sides of his head. His bare arse was sticking up invitingly. His knees were held apart and kept straight by a horizontal pole with two large cuffs.

Malfoy held his hips in an iron grip. He stood behind him, spread his cheeks with both hands until a puckered hole was revealed and shoved his cock into it.

The Harry Potter in his mind first yelled profanities against his tormentor, which then turned into vain pleas for mercy, which swiftly melted into unarticulated sounds that betrayed his arousal as clearly as the erection bobbing wildly in time with Malfoy's thrusts.

The pillory creaked and crashed. Potter couldn't escape. Malfoy sneered at the fact that his victim was evidently enjoying himself and made lewd remarks that drove Potter to futilely rattling the contraption in which he was caught.

He shrieked and swore when Malfoy took advantage of his lover's being at his mercy and started to spank him. The torturer's hand smacked his arse relentlessly until his skin was bright red. Potter begged for him to stop, yet jerked forward with each slap with increasingly lust-filled moans, and kept sticking his backside out like a non-verbal plea for _more_. Finally, Malfoy reached around and teased his prize's leaking prick, continuing to spank and to deride him, _you want it like this, just like this, you horny little fuck, you want me to take you harder-_ until the pleasurable pain elicited more helpless curses that crescendoed hoarsely-

Severus found himself on a chair in the corner of the room and wasn't all sure when he had gone there. The fantasy had apparently been powerful enough to carry his mind away entirely and for him to black out for a moment after his orgasm. His right hand was palpably flecked with sticky white fluid and still down his pants. He removed it and wiped his fingers on a handkerchief he had brought along.

He spent a short moment on thinking that he could have brought his wand and cleaned himself up a lot more easily and efficiently than this. Only when he crunched up the kerchief did he become aware of the fact that he could _see_ his hand. He could _see_ his legs and his feet.

The Invisibility Cloak must have slipped off. It lay on the ground in an untidy heap two steps away. He broke out in sweat in an instant.

He looked over to the bed in breathless panic, dreading what he might see.

However, Potter and Malfoy lay much like before. Perhaps they were panting a little louder – it was hard to tell through the pounding rush of blood in his head – and the sheet that had covered their feet had been thrown off the mattress. There were white stains evident on Malfoy's stomach. His hand had slipped off of his lover's side and now lay curled against his belly.

Severus stood and left the room without a sound, stepping over the heap of cloth on the floor.

After a long shower he was the first in the kitchen. The sun was just coming up sluggishly as he stood by the window and looked out onto the street to observe the waste collection truck as it crawled from one wheelie bin to the next, its drivers never even wondering why they always skipped number 12.

He blew his tea gently. Wanton rape fantasies danced through his mind. He knew he shouldn't let them, and that it was another level of perversion and nastiness to indulge, but he couldn't help it. He scalded his tongue on his beverage just as a very handsome and powerful stranger who held both his wrists in an irresistible grip with one hand and used the other to pull his hair viciously slid his huge cock into him despite his struggling and cursing.

The smile Draco threw him upon entering the kitchen almost an hour later was almost conspiratorial. And maybe a little sheepish and wicked? Severus frowned into his third cup of tea. It had been too passing a look to be positive about his conclusion but he couldn't resist the idea blooming in his head that the pillory-featured fantasy had, in fact, not been his own private one.

Rather, by stepping close to the dreamers, he seemed to have tapped into theirs.  
His body immediately compelled him to slip out of the kitchen and back up into his bathroom for a few minutes of privacy before the conference restarted.

Potter didn't meet his eyes for the first half of the day. Once he did – after Severus' engaging in the conversation about Circle's movements' evaluation forced him to do so –, there was with a tinge of defiance in his look. His jaw was sticking out stubbornly as if to challenge him to speak up and judge, his tone seemed a bit more clipped and his eyes were narrower.

Severus couldn't help but find it endearing, quaint and more than a little redeeming.

/

The day concluded on the bleak note that, obviously, Riddle/Lucius was more stable a character than they had thought after Wladimir's recount. Analysis of "troop movement" as George Weasley had dubbed it, revealed that he/they seemed to be increasingly capable of tactical, internally logical thinking over the last three weeks at the minimum. They had begun to effectively deploy the still-small band of henchmen and -women to comb the areas strategically and to make plans for gathering information which he/they had now noticed he/they needed desperately in order to reach their aim.

Around mid-afternoon, a letter from Fleur Delacours arrived via falcon, containing disconcerting news of an abduction that had taken place in Morocco. A wizard by the name of Chandresh Papillon had vanished from his villa in Rabat. This man appeared to be the Central European Nicholas Flamel. He was currently three hundred eighty one years old and had written numerous books on immortality that were considered important on the continent. He had been seen last night trying to hail the Magicobus somewhere in Lyon. The driver reported that he had seemed addled and scared and that he had disappeared without a trace the moment he had made to board.

Potter was forced to deploy a contingent composed of Charlie and Arthur Weasley and Minerva McGonagall to France. The three of them had insisted in leaving at once to meet with Fleur, collect more information and offer help and advice to the French Ministry. Demaris and Laurent accompanied them as what they called 'door-openers' and interpreters. Potter, Shacklebolt and all those headed for France took a floo to the Ministry in order to apply for and arrange a VEP (very express portkey) to Paris.

The conference was disbanded around half past four.

Severus realized that it wasn't a good idea to have gone back to his own flat the moment the door screeched shut behind him. The air was clammy, cold and smelled so rancid that it made even a Potions Master gag. There was food from days before on the stove that had grown a blue-grey coat. The sight of his bed – the couch he usually slept... well, spent the night on – and the duvet without a linen draped over it so carelessly irked him to no end. The entire _sensation_ of this flat galled him. He didn't know precisely why. It wasn't just the faint stink of mould, linoleum, previous residents' pets and old cooking fat, it was more.

He hastily re-stoppered some vials of potions that stood in a foot of water in the sink and the bathtub for cooling purposes, quickly packed some clothes, books and other essentials into the nearly-bottomless backpack the Hogwarts teaching staff had given him as a welcome-present the year he had started as Potions Master – the only gift he had ever kept, even though he had never been seen wearing it –, threw a handful of general cleaning spells through the room and left as if he were on the run from something.

Later, he didn't remember if he had locked the door on his way out. He found that he didn't care.

The rest of the evening was spent at his workplace. Galyushka, his Ukrainian protegée, was the only one of his "team" still there. Judging by her ramrod-straight back and the wide-eyed look she was giving him when he came in, the others had appointed her to stay and have a look over the projects while they went to the pub for a pint or some such, exploiting and celebrating his general absence and her inability to protest against having their responsibilities imposed on her.

They apparently hadn't expected him to come and check in on them. Neither had Galyushka. There was a sleek, black Muggle device on her desk which she had tried and failed to cover hastily with books and scrolls. It showed a cartoonish drawing of strangely globular birds with thick black eyebrows, rickety structures, green pig heads and a very large slingshot. The woman blushed and averted her eyes when she realized that he had seen, in that on-the-verge-of-tears fashion that made it impossible to chide her properly lest she believed that she was about to lose her job and be deported back to her home country.

He merely sighed and made a lazy hand gesture that she could interpret as she wished. He tended not to communicate with her in words since he wasn't entirely sure if she had ever mastered English and because he found that she understood very well without it. She didn't seem to mind.

It was hard to waste five hours when there was nothing at all to do. All projects – and there weren't many of them presently – were in perfect order, steadily simmering or boiling or cooling exactly the way they should and would be for days on end. All ingredients were deposited, chilled or heated the way they needed to be. Even his scrolls were in alphabetical order, even the ones on his desk. The in-box for assignments was empty, something it had never been as long as he was working here.

He ended up re-mincing and re-cutting flobberworm larvae and systematize them according to colour (white, eggshell, yellowish, greyish, flecked) and size (length: shorter than a centimetre (baby), one to two and a half centimetres (young adult), two and a half to four centimetres (adult), longer than four centimetres (aspiring snake); circumference: less than half a centimetre (big), more than half a centimetre (fat), more than a centimetre (morbidly obese)) – completely useless but a satisfying task nevertheless.

All the while he imagined walking down a corridor towards a brightly lit bedroom. A voice that sounded annoying like his own – which he had once dubbed his voice of reason – asked him how much longer this fortune, this fair weather could possibly hold. It told him to prepare for a sudden fall and a painful impact. For another round of hope building, overreaching aimlessly and finally toppling over like a house of cards.

The voice asked him how he planned on living with the memories of these past three days

"When things seem too good to be true, they usually are," he said to himself and looked up at a noise. Galyushka was standing in the doorway with a small tower of large jars with ingredients lodged between her chin and hands. She looked at him with her big, shining eyes and blinked a silent question at him.

He caught himself suppressing a smile and minced the flobberworm to within an inch of its afterlife.

/

The key to his door's room also fit into the main door's lock. Returning to Grimmauld Place felt strange, especially in comparison to returning to his own flat.

The huge house was so quiet without all the guests. At the same time, there was always a soft little murmur, a blend of magic at work and the natural creak and groan of breathing wood. He made his way up the stairs and into his room, put down his backpack which now only held clothes and toiletries, and went back to the kitchen for a small dinner and a tea.

Potter and Malfoy were there – instead of, as he had hoped, already in bed –, huddled on the table over two tubs of Thai takeaway noodles and engaged in conversation. The room around them looked huge. The whole scene oddly reminded him of Hopper's Nighthawks.

They both looked up when he entered. "Severus," Malfoy greeted him. "Welcome home."

He scowled at the last word but didn't comment. "Any news from France?"

"They had a meeting scheduled with the Cat but she apparently had somewhere more important to be and cancelled last minute, so there's no progress there," Potter said.

Maribelle Chatsurlachaise, or Chat – the Cat – for short, was the current Minister of Magic of France, a slightly anorexic-looking former teacher of Arithmancy at Beauxbatons. Her reputation was somewhat fearful and so was her appropriately catlike stare. The severity of her frowny face could compete with that of Minerva McGonagall. To avoid meeting her was a life goal.

"Charley got in touch with the French Knight Bus driver but there are no good news on that front, either. The guy is somewhat of a clutterbrain, so in the end we can't even be totally sure that it was in Lyon that Papillon hailed the bus, and no further specifics of how or why he vanished into thin air while boarding. Of course, we have no authority to question the man properly or maybe extract and have a look at his memory, so..." He trailed of, stabbing his plastic fork into his fried noodles to illustrate his frustration.

"And more worryingly, Delacours reports that the suspicion is currently running high in French ministry circles. Could be that the Cat just wanted get rid off the British people waiting on her doorstep. If that's the case, I predict we're going to have a hard time trying to get anywhere with Riddle and his gang." Malfoy gave a frown.

Anglo-french multilateral relations were tricky, for Muggles as well as Wizards. There was a tradition of mutual derision and contempt apparently going back to the times when the antediluvian period was hardly even on the horizon. Depending on the other European countries, there was invariably a fluctuating level of reluctance towards cooperation between the two nations.

At the moment, all those levels were high due to friction in the world of finance. Severus remembered skimming Prophet headlines proclaiming currency value discussions and that someone was accusing someone else of artificially inflating prices or currency translation rates or some such fraudulent behaviour. Tempers were flaring. Letters to the editor were written. Fists were shaken across the Channel.

"If this man was truly abducted by Riddle, it would be highly unwise to wait much longer before taking action, despite French Ministry resistance or British bureaucracy," Severus said, knowing that the two men before him had probably come to the same conclusion ages ago. "If a true Philosopher's Stone or any other means of gaining immortality were to fall into his hands through Papillon, there'd be no telling how dramatically things would spin out of control. Chances are Riddle is too mad and too fixated on that grave he's searching for to take up the offer but it would be foolish to hope for it."

Potter nodded and gestured with the fork. "I agree. But how do we- or rather, how do _I_ get Kingsley to authorise that? He'll have to deal with the responsibilities in the end. No one is keen on the idea of deploying English Aurors on French soil, and no one less so than Kingsley. Then again, the mere idea of a deployment is pointless so long as we have no idea where exactly to deploy ourselves to. Without French approval and support, we're going to get nowhere at all." He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "We could officially brief them, let them know every word spoken here in the last three days. They could prepare and deal with Riddle themselves. The again, they probably never would, just out of spite and because they don't really understand who they're dealing with anyway."

A sigh told Severus that they had also already been at this frustrating point in their discussion before, possibly several times.

"Maybe," Potter finished in a slightly absent-minded way as if he were talking to himself now, "we should just advise them to do the exact opposite of what we want them to do. Reverse psychology and such. Might even work." He made a face and murmured something to himself that included several derogatory terms against French people and at least two expletives Severus had never heard in his life.

"We'll have to see about all of that tomorrow, won't we?" Draco asked with an air of finality. He got up and binned the two empty food containers in the trash can under the sink. "Tell you what, I'm going to take a bath."

"I'll be right up," Potter responded and watched him leave. So did Severus who immediately wished he had stayed once he was out the door.

There were a few moments of silence in which Potter seemed to examine his fingernails and then played with the glass of water in front of him.

"Tea?" he suddenly asked and gestured towards the stove. "Water's still almost hot."

His previous appetite for dinner had faded with the report but he proceeded to brew himself a cup just to have something to do anyway. Also, it gave him an excuse to turn his back on Potter.

The kettle had just started to steam when Potter cleared his throat and said, "I am glad you accepted my invitation."

Anyone else might have reckoned that he was talking about the invitation to the Order meeting.

Severus waited until the whistle had grown unbearably shrill before he took the kettle from the flame. The tea leaves swirled around mesmerizingly in his cup.

"It was a summon, not an invitation," he finally answered. He was tempted to put the kettle back onto the hot stove just so the whistle would kill this conversation.

"A very blunt invitation, then. Witty and subtle has never been a strength of mine, you know that."

So it had been a spell. It would account for his falling asleep so abruptly that first night instead of taking his leave like he had planned.

Potter's glass scraped over the kitchen table as he rolled it across the wood along it's bottom edge, from one hand to the other.

"You only noticed the invitation at all because you wanted to be invited, Snape."

His hand froze halfway to the cup. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold it still and he didn't want to risk spilling boiling tea over his fingers. _And how could you possibly have known that I wanted to be invited? _

_How?_

The kitchen was suddenly airless.

"Get out of my head," he wheezed almost tonelessly.

"Your head. Your head is such a complicated thing," Potter said in response, got up from his chair and stretched his arms with a sigh. "Reality isn't nearly as complicated when you look at it properly."

Severus almost didn't catch the moment he left the room.

Something heavy was sitting on his chest, big enough to crush him. He gazed down into his teacup, lost in confounded thoughts, until the beverage was tepid. Then he tipped it away without having taken so much as a sip and rinsed the cup.

An hour might have passed by. The house creaked and yawned around him, giving the sleepy silence room to breathe. The knot in his stomach wouldn't dissolve.

So he did the only thing he could.

He gave up.

/

Every step up the stairs was surrender. He walked right past his own room to the end of the hall.

The door was wide open so that the muted light from inside painted a yellow trapezoid onto the floor. There was no trace of the Invisibility Cloak anywhere and Severus started to sweat.

He was about to turn and leave, to _run _just like reason demanded, when Potter's voice rang out. Not loudly, but clearly enough. It called his name, which made him stop dead in his tracks.

As he stood there motionlessly, Potter said, slowly and carefully, as if every word were of utmost importance, "Everything you're running away from is in your head."

He hesitated for a full minute, gritted his teeth, turned around and entered the room.

/~~~

**TBC**

_Comments would honestly be nice. Short ones, long ones, nice ones, unkind ones - I'd take them all with gratitude._


	9. Chapter 9

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: There's hurt ahead this time.

After a few days of contemplation I have decided not to post the "real" 9th chapter. It was really just... well, smut. Shamelessly wordy, very explicit, S&M-y smut. I loved (LOVED) writing it, but, as it turns out I'm not gifted when it comes to capturing the sexy. *sighs* It just sounds so much better in your head.

Quite apart from that, 's policy wouldn't have approved. I'm surprised that the previous chapters are still up, to be honest.

Suffice it to say that it would've done next to nothing for the plot or character development. Severus met his masters in Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, understood some things about them and himself as they are spelled out to him, and found some peace of mind.

The story continues.

**-/Chapter 9/-**

/

Two falcons arrived in quick succession. The first told them that one of the ingredients for a Philosopher's Stone had been ordered by way of Mr Papillon. An Arabian salesman for exotic ingredients and good friend of the abducted had let his Ministry know that a letter of commission had arrived asking for several of the necessary materials to be sent back with the owl as quickly as possible.

The second falcon notified them that the owl had been sent on her way with a mostly empty bag and a tracking spell.

Potter, to his credit, immediately forgot all the paperwork, the administrative barriers and discarded all his beautifully elaborate plans. With the help of those Order members most experienced in combat, he devised a small contingent of quick and useful strategies. Battle strategies. Depending on the terrain they would find themselves on, any number of them could be put into effect. Gather, scatter, surround, blocking exits, following, switching tasks.

Kingsley who had had pressing ministerial duties during the day turned up just as seven Order members, two French guests and one advisor were getting ready to sally forth. A short yelling match ensued in the middle of the entrance hall.

Potter made clear that this had nothing to do with the English Ministry at all and that he was leading in the capacity of the Head of Order. That he believed – knew – Riddle to be his responsibility and that he couldn't and wouldn't let this opportunity pass.

When Kingsley threatened him with dismissal and repercussions, Potter hissed "You wouldn't dare". Into the silence that followed, the house around them seemed to scream. Boards creaked, windows rattled, doors banged shut and still the wind howled deafeningly, bristling Potter's hair.

Malfoy stepped forward and positioned himself between the two men, pulling his partner by the shoulders and interrupting the connection.

The noise abruptly died down. Shacklebolt stared, then turned on his heel and left.  
Potter turned back to the task at hand without so much as a blink of an eye and expected everyone else to do the same, even though some uneasy looks were exchanged.

Not much later, they found themselves in France, dizzy from flooing, portkeying and apparating, but determined to do what needed to be done urgently.

The owl led them to a ruin near the town of Ancelle. The smell of a fire that had destroyed the building several years ago was still in the air. It might have been a hotel, or maybe an orphanage, or a retirement home. In the old, bluish light of a Lumos spell, all that could be seen in the pitch dark were singed walls that formed wide corridors studded with gaping holes where the doors had once been. Splinters of wood that had once been door frames made them into fanged maws.

The echo was the worst. There was something profoundly unsettling and disorientating about how at one moment the naked floors and ceilings reflected every step, every rustle of clothes, even a breath and the sound of swallowing. The next moment, a hole appeared out of the dark, made by the fire, the extinguishing water, the rot and time, and it seemed to just drink their noises up.

It was cold and it didn't help that his clothes were drenched with sweat. It didn't help that the wand in his hand wasn't steady and that his Lumos' light shivered along with him.  
His left arm began to hurt as if someone was slowly lowering it over an open flame.

He turned to advise for more caution.

The light of his wand illuminated an unknown face that stared at him with crazy eyes and guttered out.

/

His side was alive with stitches. They didn't allow for much more than a feeble little call when all he ever wanted to do was shout, yell his name on the top of his lungs to make him look up, turn around, see, dodge, shield himself-

But there was no time.

The wand in his hand sent out a fiery orange light to collide with the howling spark that was flying towards Draco who was on the floor on all fours, reeling.

The sparks fused, bright like a sun. The air rippled and burst into movement. The wood of his wand between his fingers was ground to powder. He moaned a "no!" as the loss of his wand made his stomach drop like lead.

Suddenly, a noise like a match being struck. Another blinding flash. And then, all he did was scream and scream and scream until the world stopped, the stars exploded and he forgot what death felt like.

/

/

/

/

He breathed in and immediately regretted the decision. His nose was so dry that the air seemed to slice into his membranes. Breathing through his mouth instead wasn't much better. It felt like something small, smelly and furry had made its home there. It made him want to gag.

He shut his lips which were parched and painfully chipped, and worked up some saliva to swirl around on his tongue. Disconcertingly, it felt three sizes bigger than it was supposed to be. Even more disconcertingly, his saliva tasted distinctly of copper and asparagus which meant that they had given him myrtlewood tonic.

"Myrrhwhat?" someone asked. A cool, moist cloth was gently dabbed over his face. It stung and bit his lips somewhat awfully. At the same time it felt like a tiny piece of heaven.  
"Myrtlewood," he said. Repeated. He couldn't remember having said it before but the person who had asked couldn't have read his thoughts. Even for wizards, live mind reading was impossible.

"And thank Merlin for that."

Apparently, he had said this out loud.

"Yes, you have."

A rubbery something wormed its way between his lips. Squishy, without any discernible smell.

"It's water. Open up and let it melt in your mouth."

He did. It actually melted, although it wasn't ice. It wasn't quite solid, and it wasn't cold, merely cool. Yet another piece of heaven. _I should start a collection_.

"How are you feeling?" Pause. "Are you in pain at all?"

"I will be soon. Some imbecile overdosed me with myrtlewood tonic. I'll have a whole quarry of kidney stones by the end of the year."

I don't know what month it is.

"Why is it so dark?"

"It's because you still have your eyes closed."

"Oh." He let his eyes fall open and clenched them shut again immediately. The brightness was driving daggers into his eyeballs repeatedly. He swore.

"It's already noon, isn't it? I missed breakfast."

"Are-Are you all right?"

"Gods, no." He wheezed a laugh. "Not at all."

He wanted to remark that he couldn't breathe. Urgently.

Suddenly, there was a frenzy of activity around him, two voices speaking in a language he didn't understand. It sounded rather angry. Someone pushed him from the left and rolled him onto the side. Something hard and cold was pressed to the bottom side of his face.

Something pushed upwards through his chest, crept up through his throat with agonizing slowness. He choked and vomited and coughed until his eyes watered and his nose was runny with liquids he didn't want to think about.

Also, there was a blinding pain in the middle of his back that had bloomed when they had moved him, made worse by the complete numbness that started right below, like a yawning void that went on and on and on. His screams whistled through his cramped throat ineffectively, his vocal chords mangled by gastric acid.

Finally his oesophagus and stomach were evacuated and his gag reflex subsided. They laid him onto his back again. They cleaned him up. There was more myrtlewood tonic, a fresh batch that didn't taste of asparagus yet and dealt with the pain in his back quite efficiently. He blinked against the drowsiness, fighting to stay awake. Someone had given him another chunk of that strangely half-solid water. He slid it under his tongue.

The person with the heavenly moist cloth was very blond and pale but had dark rings and wrinkles under his eyes. His hair seemed lank and unwashed, bound in an untidy ponytail. Their eyes met for a few moments. He opened his mouth to say his name, only to realize that he couldn't. He blinked and closed his mouth again, confused. He could've sworn-

"Draco," the blond said helpfully.

"Of course," he replied with a hoarse rasp that brought tears to his own eyes. "I seemed to have forgotten for a second."

"That's all right." He dipped the cloth in a bowl that sat on the bedside table. "Do you remember anything, Severus?"

"I- I don't-"

His head suddenly spun from rediscovering his entire life within three or four seconds. His brain sorted through his memories at light speed. Severus Snape. Lily Potter. Hogwarts. James Potter. Hatred. Tom Riddle. Albus Dumbledore. Death. War. Dark Marks. More death. Hogwarts again. Harry Potter. Loathing. The dungeon classroom. More war. Even more death. Voldemort. Misery. Grimmauld Place. Lucius Malfoy. The Second Circle. The bedroom at the end of the corridor. Ancelle. The ruin. The smell. Fighting. A laugh. Running. Fleeing? Pain. A feeling of loss. A flash of light. Pain pain pain.

"I don't feel my toes." He couldn't say why he was whispering.

"They're trying to fix that. It's complicated." The water in the bowl had some camomile in it. Severus focussed on that faint scent and hoped that his head wouldn't explode, although he was positive that it was about to crack open like a walnut any second now.

Long moments passed in which Draco dabbed his face with the cloth and no one said anything.

"I remember running. I think I might have been... running after you." He remembered shouting his name repeatedly, loudly and painfully, because he had had the stitch. Or maybe it had been something worse. Draco. Draco! _Draco, NO!_

One look out of sleepless, worried eyes told him that he was right.

"You saved my life that night, Severus."

He lifted a hand to his forehead to rub away the tiredness that swirled around his head like cotton candy, but his hand was feeble and heavy and oddly rubbery, too. He missed his face. The hand landed on the pillow next to his ear with a _whumpp_. He pushed onwards from there until he eventually managed to pinch the bridge of his nose – not without stabbing his own eye –, and even then it felt like it was someone else's arm. His fingers were like cold sausages with bits of razor blade stuck into them.

"I don't remember that," he finally said.

"Curse bounced off the shield you made, ricocheted and hit you instead."

Draco swallowed audibly and continued with a flat voice.

"It pulverised all your vertebrae from your fourth thoracic downwards, the entire left side of your pelvis and a third of your left thigh bone."

That accounted for the pain he remembered. Lots and lots of pain. And it accounted for the fact that, right now, his body stopped a little north of his navel. Below that fuzzy line, nothing existed at all. He looked at the two pointy size-9 mounds under the blanket at the far end of the bed. They might as well have been someone else's feet. The two large hoses leading to them might as well be someone else's legs. He tried to ignore their irregular shape – especially on the left side where his thigh used to be, or so Draco had informed him, and where they had indubitably put some sort of brace – , the unnatural angles and took his eyes of that ghastly landscape.

"I should be dead." _I might be better off._

Draco shrugged and nodded at the same time, biting his lip as if to quell an urge to cry. It was the saddest thing Severus had ever seen.

"Where am I?" He looked at the whiteness around him. Anywhere but at the desolate man and his sorrowful face.

"Switzerland." His breath trembled as he exhaled. "In Saint Genève Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, in a city called Lausanne. Second floor, in the far corner of _salle escale _one-three-nine to be exact."

Only now did Severus realize that the blinding white he had seen wasn't the midday sun but a reflection from the curtains drawn around his bed. It all seemed so very quiet, but when he lay very still he could hear the hum of magic all around.

"They put me in a stopover room?" That's what 'salle escale' roughly translated to. "With the people who hiccup, and then bubbles come out of their ears, and those who need a little lie-down after a long-distance apparition?" It took him frighteningly long to say that. He had to breathe in way too many times in the middle of those sentences.

You just told me that several important bones are missing from my body. If not for an overdose of tonic, I'd be going mad with pain.

And they basically put me on hold?

Draco said nothing, just wrung the cloth over the bowl. Over and over, even though not a drop more could be pressed from it.

"I failed you," he said after a very long time of needlessly torturing the cloth. His shoulders trembled, more and more violently, until it finally broke out of him. "Severus. I am... _so_ sorry." It was almost a sob.

He threw the cloth into the bowl, causing the water to splash out over the rim, and collapsed into a chair that stood near the foot of the bed. With a hanging head he started to ramble. He told him about those moments after the pain had swallowed him whole, told him about all the blood that had spilled out of all the orifices of his body and onto the floor, making a scarlet puddle on the broken tiles and grew and grew, the fear and the panic. He told him about Potter having the presence of mind to perform an emergency stasis spell on him and apparating to the nearest hospital in Marseille, naively hoping that every hospital was bound to the same oath that St Mungo's was under. He told him how the nurses and doctors there refused to take him in after catching a glimpse of the mark on his arm.  
He told him how the same thing had happened in Monaco.

In Genoa.

In Turin.

Severus was suddenly very cold from the inside.

"The spell was collapsing a tiny bit with every apparition, it wasn't designed to withstand that kind of stress. Moving you, side-apparating you in your condition- It was the only thing we could do, but it was insane and very, very harmful and I'm _so_ sorry." He had put his face in his hands. His voice was high-pitched with the effort of fighting against dissolving in rueful tears.

Severus wished he could sit up and reach out even though he knew that if he had been able to, he wouldn't have. Strange how one was always most desperate to do something exactly when it was impossible. Laugh until you wet yourself when you're supposed to be dead serious. Sing when you're hoarse. Touch when you never knew how to.

Draco resumed his breathless confession with their arrival in the hospital they were currently located in, with Potter's negotiations – open threats, head Auror gear and all –, the head doctor's giving in and the disgraceful compromise they had reached that had put him _here_. Between the people who got a pat on the head and a lollipop before they were sent on their merry ways. Cut off from the rest of reality, looked after but not really cared for. Even the warding spells had been put up by Malfoy and Potter instead of by hospital staff.

"If there was any way to apparate to London from here, we would have done that instead. But it's just too far. In your condition, it would likely have splinched you or caused even more harm. Harry has tried to get a long-distance portkey, but making one that meets the requirements needed to safely transport an injured person takes so much time. Even longer than getting a ticket and taking a Muggle aeroplane would have, but with all their anti-terror safety on their airports now that wasn't an option, either. The sheer number of people we would've needed to confound and obliviate- not to mention that that would've required Swiss Ministry approval. So we had to settle here. In this stupid goddamn stopover room." The anger was really an apology.

Draco looked up. His eyes were red and shone with tears as he related the doctors' diagnosis. Apparently, regrowing the bones per se wasn't much of a problem. Regrowing vertebrae _and_ properly fitting spinal discs _and_ functional hip joints was.

No potion or spell was intelligent enough to do more than one thing at once. Properly restoring bones where they belonged, cartilage where it belonged, and muscles around it – all those were too varied and too diverse tasks.

Severus had never been very interested in mediwizardry or even biology, but from a Potionmaker's standpoint, it made sense. Two things that were too divergent or even polar opposites in their internal structure, characteristics and purpose could not be affected at the same time. One bottle could only always hold one shade of properties. For example, you could make _either_ inflexible things _or _rigid things, never both at the same time. Two bottles administered in quick succession, one making rigid things, the other making flexible things, could interact wildly with each other, they might cancel each other's effect out, or much, much worse. That was why there was such a thing as irreparable damage, even for wizards, and why myopia was still an unsolved problem. Why Longbottom would probably forever only see in two dimensions. Why Thomas would never manage to unclench his fists ever again.

Giving him Skele-Grow, something Potter had immediately suggested due to his own experience with vanished bones, would have left him with vertebrae, pelvis and thigh bone all fused together to one solid piece.

According to the doctors, fixing someone who was lacking a part of his backbone was also several times more complicated if the affected person had been moved or transported unprofessionally. His organs had apparently shifted around despite Potter's spell, and the residue of pulverised bones, cartilage and muscles – the rubble out of which new things could have been built, maybe, with some luck – was already making his way out of his system, filtered through his kidneys, bowels, lungs, even his pores.

All of this explained the repeated overdoses of myrtlewood tonic, a very strong pain killer. Kidney stones the size of marbles suddenly seemed like a minor issue.

Through the drug haze, he heard Albus Dumbledore's voice in his head. The old man sounded strangely excited and amused. 'It seems you are finally beyond repair, Severus. I didn't think I'd live to see the day – and as it turns out I really didn't. More treacle tart?' Severus suddenly had to grit his teeth to keep them from chattering.

"It's all my fault," Draco finished. "If I had just been more careful, I – it's all. _All_. _My_ fault." His remorse was so palpable in his face that it was almost a physical, solid thing. It so threatened to smother him that Severus fought for breath.

"Is he dead, Draco?" he asked quietly. _Is he really, finally, truly dead?_

They both knew who he was referring to.

Tell me it's over this time. Tell me my damn legs were a price well paid.

Draco pressed his lips together and nodded. Something shiny fell through his lashes when he blinked, and he wiped it away quickly. "Yes." He sucked in an unsteady breath, trying to regain composure. "Yes, he... _they_. I- after you were hit, I-."

Severus didn't dare to offer his hand to comfort him. He thought it was clumsy and not a comforting gesture at all even though he knew that people tended to do that – touching. Seeking physical contact. He had always been bad at touching anyway. Martha Brinkley had told him that he was rubbish at it all the way back in fifth grade, even at holding hands.  
He laid his head back on his pillow and looked up at the ceiling. He couldn't give comfort, so he tried to give privacy, tried to lose himself in some thoughts about Martha Brinkley but nothing came to mind, not even her face, hardly even her hair colour.

Brunette, possibly. The nameless, ubiquitous colour between blond and brown.

Draco lunged out of his chair and seized his hand with both of his. He clutched it so tightly it almost hurt, then crouched down on the floor by the bed and wept silently into the crook of his arm, his shoulders shuddering violently.

Severus didn't know why he was crying. Maybe out of guilt, or out of grief. Maybe out of the odd kind of relief that comes with ending something, even if that something is another life, no matter how terrible, toilsome and costly the way to closure has been. Maybe out of shame, for feeling relieved. Probably for all those reasons at once.

He caught himself gently if awkwardly petting Draco's hair with the other hand and muttering little white lies about how everything would be fine. He continued to look at the ceiling. Tears – pathetic, self-pitying tears that no one would ever see – tickled him as they ran down his temples and into his hair.

/~~~

**TBC**

_My stats page tells me that someone out there has read this. You – I don't know you, but I thank you._


	10. Chapter 10

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Dialogue.

**-/Chapter 10/-**  
~~~~~~~~

/

"I never thanked...," he started and forgot what he wanted to say. He blinked. Then he remembered with an 'Ah'. "I never thanked you for the settee."

"The settee?" Draco was confused for a moment, but then his face lit up in understanding. "Ah, your seat in the dining room. Yes. You have Harry to thank for that, actually. He spend some thought on it, really, choosing the sofa and then moving the thing around until he found a suitable spot." He put an emphasis on the word 'suitable'.

"Suitable," Severus parroted. He knew that he was slurring, that he had said 'soo-abbel', and he had already forgotten why he had repeated it again. He opened his mouth and without his expressed consent it said "the settee was suitable for me. And... and he is suitable for you. That's nice. Isn't it."

Draco flashed a smile that literally lit up the room. Severus squinted against the brightness.

"I think you should take this, Severus. Open up."

Another one of the squishy pads fell onto his tongue. As it melted it tasted of onions. Some of the fog lifted from his head almost at once, revealing the headache underneath.

"Better?"

"That would depend on your personal definition of 'better', Mr Malfoy," he groaned. Merlin, talking was so exhausting. Had there really been days when he had done that for hours on end without showing any signs of tiredness? Or was that the stuff of fairy tales and legends?

"They said I should give you one of those when you start acting drunk. Has to do with the painkillers, they said."

"How would you possibly know how I act when drunk." He hadn't been drunk – really drunk, happy drunk - for... oh, decades. What a shame, really. In hindsight, he'd had so many good reasons to get totally plastered. _Wasted_ opportunities.

On second thought, had he ever been happy drunk in his life at all? He frowned by himself.

"You remarked upon my relationship," Draco answered. "People usually have to be drunk in order to work up enough courage to mention it, what with all the fired people and Harry suing their asses." He suddenly grinned. "I remember one night out with Harry and some others. Merlin and Mordred, Zabini had to get _so_ smashed before he was brave enough to mention it even though he was clearly dying to do so all evening, insufferable, nosy little gossip that he is. And when he did, what he asked me was, and I quote, 'So do you, like, _like_ picking up Potter's gnome at the other end?'" Laughing out loud at the memory, he added, "Unforgettable, if a little hard to remember."

Severus let him reminisce about that memorable night a little more and focussed on his hand instead. It was lying on his chest right in front of him. Even the very thorough cleaning spells of a hospital hadn't been able to get rid of the dark rims around his fingernails that had accumulated over years and years of handling potions and ingredients. That was strangely comforting.

"Do you want to know about me and Harry, Severus?" Draco interrupted his contemplation with an inquisitive look. "I'd imagine that there are still some... questions. Questions that you should legitimately be welcome to ask. Especially- under the circumstances."

He didn't specify which circumstances that were but Severus guessed that it had to do with that night when he had been tied to a chair and... all that. He caught himself trying to shift around in his bed but only managed a little movement of his shoulders. He cleared his throat.

"Whatever kind of questions would that be, Mr Malfoy?" He chose to talk to the foot end of his bed rather than to the blond in that chair next to him. "The... arrangement between the both of you and me was rather straightforward. Details about your relationship with Harry Potter are none of my business, I believe."

"First off, the arrangement _is_ straightforward. Present tense." Suddenly, he was very businesslike. Very Malfoy. "I hope you are not under the illusion that this temporary hindrance has changed much about the nature of the arrangement. And yes, in case you're wondering, it _will_ be temporary. Trust me. Harry and I have set our minds to it."

Out of anyone else's mouth, this would have sounded pompous or corny. Even out of Draco Malfoy's mouth, it elicited an eye-rolling from Severus. Yet he didn't dare to contradict him either. He didn't dare to yell at him that he certainly wouldn't be next to their bed in a wheelchair, with no feeling below his midriff and dosed to the rafters with painkillers, even though the temptation was great.

Then again, they probably already knew as much.

"Where do you think Harry is, right now?" Draco asked in reaction to his eye-roll and crossed his arms over his chest. "What do you think he's doing?"

Rhetorical questions didn't demand answers.

They obviously refused to give up hope. Stubborn as they were, maybe, _maybe_ reality would eventually cave in to their irrational demands.

It wasn't like it hadn't happened before.

"Secondly, by inviting you in to our bedroom, you are effectively part of our relationship. If there are any details you are interested in you are welcome to ask them since they _are_ very much your business now."

Severus went back to intently focussing on the dirt under his fingernails. For the first time in days, there was a feeling near his bellybutton. It was so weak and subdued that he couldn't even put a name to it.

The silence stretched.

Draco heaved a defeated sigh and rolled his eyes heavenwards – Severus felt more than saw the latter. "Okay, then. It would be best for you to sleep anyway." He got up and made to leave. "The offer stands, Severus."

He pulled the curtain aside. Instantly, noise flooded into his bright little cell. People were running and shouting in their harsh foreign language, magic was being performed, shoes were squelching on linoleum floor. All of it was interspersed with the odd sounds that were impossible to place.

"How did you know?" he burst out into this din, hoping that saying it out loud would make the feeling in his stomach go away, while at the same time both hoping and fearing that Malfoy wouldn't be able to catch it over all that noise.

The curtain slid shut again, abruptly cutting off the world.

Draco was still standing there, looking at him with slightly lifted eyebrows. Expectant but gentle. Patient. Even caring. Not an expression to ever cross a Malfoy's face in living history. Potter's influence was truly terrifying.

"How did you know?" he hastily repeated under that unusual stare. He balled a weak fist as if he could box the nervous restlessness that made him want to squirm. Maybe pummel it into submission. Embarrassment, his old friend. He screwed his eyes shut and ignored it with all his might.

"How did you know about... how did-" He stumbled over his own, drugged brain. Words that normally came easy to him were now fleeing, darting away like fish in a pond. He breathed in mightily for a longer, more cumbersome explanation.

"Potter said that he had put a spell me, a spell that would only work if I were... were so inclined." He bit back the word 'horny' even though it was dead-on. "I also assume that some sort of magical coercion was involved in making me stay the night in the first place. After all, there was no good reason for me to spend the night anywhere but in my own flat, and yet I ended up remaining at Grimmauld Place."

He risked a glance up at Draco for some sort of confirmation but got none from his patient look.

"I need to know how you could possibly have known about- about this inclination. Why did he apply this spell, why..." He trailed off, both short of breath and of words.

"The last night of sixth year," Draco said simply.

/

Something broke inside of him. Cold, fetid self-loathing leaked out. _Ah. The last night of sixth year when I got off on clandestinely watching two minors have sex._

"You were there. We knew, afterwards-"

"How?" he almost choked. This was supposed to be his filthy secret. It had been his only comfort that the whole shameful experience was entirely private.

Draco laughed lightly and without malice. Such an unexpected, positive sound. "Come on, Severus. Give me some credit. I was – and will forever be – a Slytherin, after all."

He paused. Severus bit his tongue and averted his eyes as Draco sat back down on his chair.

"That night, I had was finally about to get what I wanted – needed, rather. Since it was the night of the ball, it was only reasonable to assume that dozens of my fellow students were in a similar, lucky position. Dorms are always out of the question, because- I don't think I need to specify that, do I? The prefect's bathroom would surely be occupied. The damn Astronomy Tower would be so overcrowded that there'd be a queue. And it's not very classy, either, such a Hufflepuff kind of choice," he added with a mumble and a distasteful frown. "Such a big castle, yet there's just no space. Like it's smaller on the inside."

Walks that ended too quickly. Perhaps he was right.

"So," Draco paused for dramatic effect, "I decided to take him down the snake pit instead. Chances were good that we'd have some vacancy down there, due to my dear Head of House and his taste for the theatrical that had scared even the castle ghosts away. I thought I was smart enough to not get myself caught."

Three lifetimes. Perhaps even three and a half. That's how long ago this was, him barging in on hanky-panky with billowing robes. He felt old. His hand looked frail and not just because of the hospital lights.

"So when a smart-arsed Slytherin doesn't want to be bothered and decides to be stealthy, he takes his boyfriend, puts some camouflage charm on himself and him, he silences their steps and the room." He had uncurled three fingers for counting. "And he obviously would never walk down a corridor that is two inches thick with slick lichen and moss which no one has used in years without taking some sensible precautions."

He paused for effect and let him make the deduction. The knut didn't take long to drop. "Footprints," Severus finally sighed reluctantly.

Some things were so simple and blatant that they just didn't come to mind.

"Footprints," Draco repeated with a lopsided smile. "I thought I was so smart but it really figures that you found us anyway, somehow. The next morning... well, when we were... finished, despite all my Slytherin cunning, there was a track made by one person coming to the door, obviously standing around for a bit, and then leaving again. It didn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had happened."

"I never wanted-," he began, but didn't know how to finish that sentence without feeble excuses. Malfoy wasn't interested in any of them, either, and chose to ignore the attempt.

"Harry and I didn't have the chance to talk about that, or anything else, really, for more than a year after that night," he said, ever so slightly lost in memories. "Our paths diverged dramatically the next day. We both had other things to think about – and to be scared of – for quite some time. And after that was all done, it was hard to come to terms with the fact that we had survived. Together, no less, after a fashion. We weren't so sure what to do with that at all, we hadn't... hadn't prepared. At all."

Severus knew that feeling intimately. Muggle therapists would call it survivor's guilt or PTSD or some such, but there was no word or abbreviation that adequately described that moment of horrible realization – a moment which might last months or years. That moment when one became aware that he wasn't only alive but physically sound, safe and free – outwardly unscathed, as if nothing at all had happened, with potential for happiness – while others couldn't even be buried, or were buried in coffins that were bolted shut.

"A year or so ago, while you were still... well, _gone_, Kingsley brought up your name when he first tried to kick-start a functional Potion Division at the Ministry as an accessory to St Mungo's and the Magic Development Department, something he had apparently wanted to do for quite some time after that big Wolfsbane Potion debate some time before that. And then, there was the thing with Dumbledore's will. Suddenly, your name seemed to be flung about left and right... and you know how it is. Old memories resurfaced. Harry and I finally managed to have that conversation. We wondered out loud and that idea that formed as a result was surprisingly... not unpleasant."

_You have no idea. No idea at all_, it rang in his head. This memory had been essential to his life, as decisive as the word 'mudblood' blurting out of his mouth at the wrongest moment possible, or the sight of Lily Evans kissing James Potter's cheek, or Tom Riddle touching his bared arm with his finger, or Albus Dumbledore saying 'You disgust me' to his face. "Not unpleasant" was such an unremarkable and inadequate expression.

"At the time the conference started, we still had no clear answer to why you hadn't walked in on us that night like you should have. Harry placed it on you based on conjecture. Your attendance at the conference was a given anyway and the spell wouldn't have done any harm if he had been wrong." Draco shrugged. "Knowing you a little, it seemed rather far-fetched to me, but Harry counted on a response nonetheless."

"A response," he muttered. Potter had whistled and he had danced to the tune.

"Don't you _dare_ to feel bad about it, Severus."

Their eyes met. Malfoy's gaze was suddenly hard and unyielding, even though the tone of his voice was still gentle.

"We are all, in a way, servants of our desires. Responding to them is what we do. It's not a bad thing, it's a vital sign. We're only ever really alive when we succumb. Shame," he bit out and frowned, "and guilt... they're nothing but delusions planted by other people to paralyse you so they can exercise control and soothe the pains of their own abstinence."

He broke the eye contact again and looked at the foot end of his bed. "They feel... very real," he mumbled but Draco caught it.

"I know they do. I know very well. I mean, look at me." He gestured at himself. "Sole heir to a man who was obsessed with blood purity, family lines, gender roles and all that crap. I got my sex ed from him exclusively ever since the day that I turned seven. No wonder I turned out an entitled terrorist brat. Now try to wrap your mind around the idea that you are what your father called 'a filthy shirt lifter' and ranked even below an unbound house elf. What even your gentle mother was so disgusted with that she tended to flat-out deny its very existence."

Although he had never personally heard either of them express any thought on the matter of homosexuality, this was exactly what he would have estimated. Lucius, loudly despising everything that didn't fit with his warped ideas of propriety, morals and manliness, his new world order. Narcissa, closing her eyes in distaste hoping the offending element might go away.

"Then, try to imagine discovering that there is nothing in life you ever enjoyed more than to be screwed by the boy you were supposed to loathe."

Severus was about to say 'You are young and handsome. People like you are forgiven easily' but decided against it. It would've been hypocritical and false. He knew that Draco Malfoy was far from forgiven, neither for his last name nor his sexual orientation. He might not receive hate mail and death threats, but he got a healthy dose of suspicion even from the people who were supposedly on the same side as him. More importantly, his family and friends, most everyone he had ever possibly cared about, was gone. Had turned away from him, one way or another.

It was simply due to luck that he had procured Harry Potter as a partner, someone who was capable of protecting him against the world, and willing and able to indulge him and his preferences. To love him. He was lucky to have the opportunity to be happy like this, even if this opportunity came with no extras.

"If it were just that, maybe it would even be acceptable someday," Draco continued matter-of-factly. "Maybe I could have dealt with simply being a homosexual with submissive tendencies. I would have been content with just being a receiving end - a 'bottom' or 'uke', as they say."

The corner of his mouth twitched upward in a sad smile.

"But as it turns out, my body likes- craves more... extreme things. Things that everyone else would call deviant, perverse and sickening. I like..." He swallowed and fell silent.

Severus recognized the hesitation and it came to him that Draco had probably never said any of these things aloud. To anyone, with the possible exception of Potter.

"I like being ordered around," he said with a strain in his voice and a nervous little laugh, "and manhandled. I like role-play. Bondage. Rimming. Breath play. Spanking. I enjoy... a certain amount of certain kinds of pain."

There was a short pause after this confession that Severus didn't dare interrupt with a remark, even though a 'Yes, I gathered as much that last time' lingered on the tip of his tongue. He felt that this declaration was too important for Draco and that he didn't have the right to diminish it for him

The moment passed and Draco made a dismissive gesture. "Makes taking Harry's bait seem valiant, doesn't it?" He cocked his head and smiled mildly.

Severus had never heard of valiant voyeurism before and was rather sure it didn't exist. Same for valiant lechery.

"Enjoying to watch and enjoying being watched are harmless in comparison. By my slightly warped standards anyway," Draco added.

Severus swallowed. It would be so easy to believe him. Take his word for it and be done with it, done with years of self-loathing and disgust. So easy.

Completely impossible.

Malfoy reached out and lightly touched his shoulder.

"I mean it, Severus. Don't waste another thought on shame. Not even when it comes to that one time many years ago, because you have made more than enough atonement for that. In the end, you have wronged no one. Believe me."

There was nothing left to say. His stomach was tingling with a warmth that was disconcertingly spreading upwards and made it hard for him to breathe evenly or to think straight. He doubted that it was embarrassment this time.

For once, Malfoy seemed satisfied with his silence. He got up and shoved the chair into the corner where it wouldn't be an obstacle for nurses trying to access his bed.

"Does-", he started and made Malfoy hesitate once more before slipping past the curtains. "Does Potter grant the same... forgiveness?" It felt like a foolish question but he needed to know nonetheless.

Appropriately enough, Malfoy chuckled.

"Harry would probably have to beg _your_ forgiveness instead. After all, _he_ coerced _you_, primarily for his own gain." He paused. "But yes. Consider this absolution. Even though I don't think that you are in need of any."

"Did he give you the authority to speak on his behalf like this?" he mumbled. _Enough. Enough now_, his brain said. He had talked too much, his tongue was heavy, his breath felt thin and he had heard more than he could comprehend in his current state.

And Malfoy laughed again, even louder this time. It was an amused, merry laugh that suited him well and was entirely out of place in this environment.

"I am submissive merely _inside_ the bedroom, decidedly dominant outside, Severus. I'm a Malfoy. I get my way. Potter probably isn't aware of it but he's my bitch. So when I say that, although he doesn't think that you even wronged him either, he gladly offers you whatever you need to calm your troubled conscience, he does. Oh yes, he does."

He made a very satisfied face and brushed the curtain aside. Someone was loudly calling for a doctor nearby.

Severus was already slipping back into exhausted sleep when Malfoy turned back once more, cleared his throat and said, "If you don't mind, don't tell him I what I said about him in that last part."

Severus managed to lift his fingers off the sheet to let him know he had heard, but couldn't open his eyes again after they had fallen shut even though he tried. He barely even noticed the silence falling again. The tiredness in his bones dragged him away. Just before he was all gone, he found a name for the warmth in his belly. It wasn't one he had ever encountered before in his life and he had missed it sorely all these years.

/

**TBC**

_That remark about "that night" and all those things Draco mentioned? Yeah, that refers to that missing chapter between the posted chapters 8 and 9. Things happened that night._


	11. Chapter 11

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: Pain. Again.

**-/Chapter 11/-**

/

It was darker. That was the first thing he was aware of. Slowly, very slowly, his wits assembled. With a small wave of panic, bits of a dream he was already forgetting fell off of him.

He had been running from something, in that dream, he thought. As fast as he could, but not fast enough, and now it had eaten his legs-

"Snape. Wake up."

Someone snapped his fingers right next to his ears. He flinched away from the loud sound.

"Sign this," Potter said.

Figured. Who else would wake him so roughly?

"Potter. What are you-"

"There isn't _time_ for questions or discussion."

Only now was he awake enough to see what was going on. It was apparently deep in the night. The curtains around his bed were pulled all the way aside, revealing a very big and very empty salle escale – empty just for him, he presumed, since normally halls like this one were run 24/7.

There were two rows of empty beds, made so very neatly and tucked in so rigorously that it hurt to look at them, illuminated by every third ceiling lamp which made everything look greyish yellow. Much like the flobberworm larvae he had cut up ages ago.

There were people around his bed, three of them, plus Potter. Each wore a uniform, even though they didn't quite match, indicating that they all worked for another department or even another nation, and a stern look on their face.

Potter was in his purple Auror robes again. He was ghostly, unhealthily pale and the shadows under his bloodshot eyes were even deeper than Malfoy's. No sleep and not enough food for several days. Worries. Many, many worries.

"Sign. I will explain once we're underway."

There was a stack of papers on his midriff, with a fountain pen on top that was about to roll off and fleck his white sheets. He caught it out of reflex. It was heavy like a brick.

"Underway to where?"

"Berlin," Potter said exasperatedly as if that explained anything. "Now sign."

"Potter, I cannot-"

"Please," he said. Loudly, for everyone to hear. "_Please._ We only have about five more minutes until the window closes. I know it's hard but I need you to trust me."

That look in those weary eyes that didn't make him think of Lily any more, it planted fear in him. This was a moment, defining, decretory. He might fuck up. Disappoint once more. He couldn't let that happen.

His name wasn't legible. His hand was shaking, straining to hold that pen. The damn thing spat worse than that quill he had used to write his unpublished wills.

Potter seemed utterly relieved for a fraction of a second, just before everyone around him exploded into action.

His entire bed with him on it was levitated out into the corridor and down an airless, strangely-angled staircase that smelled of cold concrete and sweet rotten apples. Two people handled the levitation spell at the same time and they weren't particularly well-synchronised. Every jostle went right down to his bones – the ones he still had left – and made them flare up in pain but he didn't dare complain. He clutched the mattress at each side to stabilise himself and clenched his jaws.

They made their way through a heavy double-door that had to be unlocked with two different spells into a brightly-lit, sparkling lobby.

There was no one at the counter. There was no one, period. No staff in sight, no night guards or porters, no incoming patients, no late-night visitors, no sleepless lurkers.  
Only Draco was there, holding up a sleek black umbrella like a torch with his right, while he had his eyes fixed on the watch around his left wrist. He counted out loud and his voice carried through the huge room. "Fourteen. Thirteen."

Potter hurried them along and made them grab a bit of umbrella. The three strangers and Draco grouped around his bed that, despite having regained soil contact, still seemed to be pitching and tossing.

"I really hope you know what you're doing, Potter," one of the three, a very stern-looking man in his forties said with a low voice.

Potter pressed his lips together and gave Severus an unreadable look. Then he glanced at Draco who had arrived at "two".

The tug was worse when you didn't actually have any feeling near your navel.

"One."

At zero, the world dissolved.

The blur and dizziness only let go of him very gradually. When he regained a semblance of consciousness, he was lying on something again and being shoved into a very spacious, stainless steel elevator.

The cot was very narrow and cold to the touch.

"Snape," Potter leaned down towards his face and spoke hastily as the lift noticeably ascended. "Listen carefully. We're in a Muggle hospital. You're going to get an operation very soon. Two of the surgeons and the assistant – they're Muggles. They're under a mild form of hypnosis, so they won't freak out when your body does odd things due to the potions and spells we're going to use to restore you. They are specialists in their field. They will fit artificial spinal disks on you tonight to make up for that which we cannot do with magic and potions."

His brain was still processing the information of their being at a Muggle hospital. In Berlin, apparently.

He had been to Berlin once. It had been cold, clammy and manky. The graffiti everywhere had been awful – tags to mark territories, as if they were dogs, and so many demanded A CAB! – and the cheerfully orange waste bins had made it that much more unpleasant. A young woman with headphones had smiled at him for no reason at all when he was walking from Potsdamer Platz to the philharmonic building. It had annoyed him quite a lot.

Potter had already hurried on. "... need to get this over with before their hypnosis wears off, before the potions to restore your vertebrae decay too far and before we run out of your painkillers."

"Muggle hospital," he caught himself mumbling tonelessly. The world suddenly looked very fuzzy. He blinked to clear the fuzz away but it was persistent, growing on everything. Maybe even inside his eyeballs.

The elevator stopped and the stretcher rattled under him, making a rhythm with ground waves and gaps between tiles. _Ta-dummta-dumm, kshh. Ta-dummta-dumm, kshh. _

"Also, we're in a bit of a hurry because if the Swiss tell the Germans to give back the patient they never wanted in the first place, I'll have to let Addison here go ahead and arrest me before I can get you back to London." Potter sounded hurried. Which was logical, since he was clearly hurrying. "I'd wager they're also rather pissed at me for taking Jones and Charlie from under the French court's noses, so we'll have to-"

"Harry, save it," Draco interjected from somewhere above him. "Look at his pupils. It's already in effect. I don't think he'll get any of it.

Severus merely blinked. The colours were starting to mingle wildly, like people did at a party after someone had spiked the punch.

What if the headphone girl had only smiled because of the music?

"Oh. Good. All right. Nils, he's all yours."

It became so blurry that he couldn't see anything much any more. His lips were entirely numb and plump like a balloon waiting to burst so he couldn't ask Potter for his reading glasses.

"Okay. Severus, right?" Yet another stranger. He had a pervasive foreign accent and obnoxiously baby blue eyes behind a pair of unnecessarily thick-rimmed glasses that pushed through the fuzz. He leaned down just like Potter had done, right into his face, invading his private sphere. He also used his first name even though they had just met and then he pronounced it wrongly. Severus hated him instantly.

"I need to to take this, and these three pills now-"

Obnoxiously blue-eyed Nils lifted his head against his will, deposited pills – presumably three – on his equally numb tongue and made him wash it down with a potion that tasted like paper cuts and fever.

He went to a place where everything else just happened en passant. His consciousness seemed to have been sucked down into the mattress of the bier he was lying on. Watching things with a detached kind of interest, from underneath. The back above him was strangely chilly. Cold, even. Bloodless. Like a corpse.

He entered a room that was as cold as that back. Everyone around him – he counted eight people once, fifty five the next time, and in the end there were just three and one of them was actually a dog – was dressed up in three shades of green. Cobalt green for the hands, pale mint green for the head and the face, and saturated duckweed green for the rest of the body. They looked like a post-modern Monet painting titled 'La Verdure #3', or like frogs with humanoid eye areas. Terrifying, really.

If only he could care.

The human above him was heaved onto another kind of gurney that was surrounded by very bright lamps. He was rolled onto the side, stabilized and fixed in place with a spell he even recognized. His back went so cold now that it began to feel hot.

"Severus," a very familiar voice said. For a moment he was sure it had been in his head.

A pair of well-known grey eyes looked at him from between two shades of green. He willed himself to smile. It was much like willing the rain to fall upwards.

"We need you to stay awake during this whole process. You need to down some potions. They won't work like they should if you sleep. You know that."

_I do. I'm a Potions Master of Hogwarts. And a spy. _

_Former_ Potions Master of Hogwarts, he reminded himself. And inarguably the worst spy in the world. I didn't even catch any sign of you and him– before. Horny sixteen year olds are not capable of hiding such things and yet I didn't _see_. I was rubbish at spying the most important things, just like I am rubbish with touching and such.

"I take that as a 'yes'," he said and reached out. His head was tilted by a cool hand.

This potion next tasted like heartburn, last minute panic and sudden disappointment.

"Count backwards from one thousand for me out loud, please," the potion giver told him.

He was at nine hundred eighty seven before it occurred to him to ask why and even then it didn't seem like an urgent question at all, so he just kept on counting until the numbers started to dissolve on his tongue.

"We're ready," someone said and someone echoed in another language that might have been Dutch.

The hurting began, slowly but undeniably, inescapable like the tide.

Someone held his hand.

He held someone's hand and couldn't have let go if he had wanted to.

/

He was scared. So, _so_ scared.

One might be under the impression that one could get accustomed to getting scared, or being scared. One could erroneously imagine that one would eventually stop being scared altogether, become immune to it like one becomes immune to chicken pox after having endured them once. But in reality, every time one was scared was an entirely new experience. No two times of fear were quite alike, even though each time dragged old memories back up, like rousing its fans for support.

This time, for instance, felt somewhat like that time when he was still small, when his father had come home and then there was so much fighting and loud yelling and glass breaking that he thought he might kill her. And then him.

But not quite.

Or that time when, after years of silence, his left arm screamed at him, so painfully that he wanted to take the carving knife that was just within his reach and just cut it off. Suddenly, he had been holding the knife in his hand and knew that he wouldn't be able to.

But not quite like that either.

He was a babe in the woods. Once, Voldemort had been so displeased with him that he had left him alone with Bellatrix. For hours. There was no fear quite so intense as the one that is experienced when one tries to hold on to sanity with all one's might, yet feels the good reasons for doing so dissolve one by one. Cubes of sugar in a cup of tea.

It was very similar now. This time, he was was falling. Falling endlessly, falling, falling, until it was actually more like being caught on the underside of something big that was falling. Until it wasn't so clear any more if he was being pushed down to earth, or the earth was racing upwards to crush him.

His skull was filled with liquid gypsum. Breathing was so very exhausting that he wanted to stop doing it but when he tried, it started to hurt in the core of himself.

He was cold.

And scared.

"Hang in there. Stay awake. Severus, open your eyes."

I'm so scared.

"It'll be all right. I need you to stay with me."

He knew somehow he needed to listen to this man. His eyelids felt like they were in shreds, the upper and the lower one were sticking together, his lashes were caked in something that might well be blood. The world was lost in a colourful, woozy glare. Still, he was falling and he was so afraid of colliding with the ground.

"Severus, you'll have to swallow this potion for me now." He barely noted that this was someone else's voice. His head was lifted up at one side by a pair of rubbery, cobalt green fingers, his mouth tipped upwards. The gypsum sloshed around dribbled out of his ear. He swallowed out of reflex and the liquid clawed down his throat. Tasted like separation anxiety and nails. He didn't have enough breath to cough.

Somewhere, someone said something that sounded like 'All right, it's working. Here we go, the next one.'

Then, a horrible screeching noise drove a lance of pain through his body. Followed by several loud cracking noises, like branches being snapped. One, two, three, four, five.

The colours were sounds.

Six, seven, eight.

The sounds were screams.

Nine, ten.

They sounded like a wounded animal. A horse or maybe a pig doused in kerosene and set on fire.

Eleven. Twelve.

The screams were his own. Inside his head. Barely making it out of his mouth in pitiful whimpers.

"Not long now, Severus. Stay awake for me. We're here."

It repeated. Over and over and over again.

Cold and fear.

The taste of nails.

That dreadful noises. Twelve of them in groups of fives, threes and twos.

The pain. With every turn it seemed to increase by an order of magnitude.

And those voices kept saying his name, keeping him awake and lying to him over and over and over again.

/

His conscience was suspended in between somewhere and near to nowhere. Time had lost track of him and had never meant anything.

From a dark, vacant place, he resurfaced. The agony that embraced him in greeting told him that he was still alive. Somehow. Barely. Not very much at all. Just by a fraction, but the whole fraction pulsed and hurt.

"I'm cold," was the first thing he said. These two syllables drained his breath, his grip on consciousness slipped away and he spun into sleep in wild, slightly sickening corkscrews.

On his way there, he heard Albus Dumbledore's voice. Albus was talking about socks again. He liked to do that, Severus knew.

/~~~

**TBC**

_Only the epilogue up ahead now. We're almost there. I thank you for staying with me._


	12. Chapter 12

Title: Doors we open, lines we cross

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: H/D

Rating: M

Warnings: A possibly unsatisfactory ending to an imperfect story.

**-/Epilogue/-**  
~~~~~~~~

/

"I took the liberty to deal with your landlord two weeks ago, paid your rent two months in advance. I figured you wouldn't want to be evicted while absent... or Muggles poking around in your stuff during a public auction by court order."

Potter shoved the door open with a shoulder. The door that had gotten stuck like that ever since he had moved into the flat protested but had to surrender to brute force. Instead of entering, Potter stepped aside and motioned with his hand, indicating him to go first.

He did.

Good grief, the air was truly horrible. He closed his mouth and tried to inhale through the nose without smelling.

"There was also something in your fridge. A greenish potion in a medium-sized Erlenmeyer flask, about this big." Severus knew that he was illustrating the size with his hands but didn't turn around to see. "Had some noxious foam around the cork. I figured it'd be better to get one of your team to pick it up. Before it... I don't know. Explodes or something."

He refused to waste his breath on explaining this course of events would have been highly unlikely – something Potter might have known if he had paid even a shred of attention in Potions class.

He didn't give in to the urge to tell him that the worst that could've happened would have been for the potion to eat through the refrigerator's interior and maybe some of the horrible PVC floor in his kitchen. Which could've made for an improvement, eventually. Maybe it would've gotten rid of that yellowish stain that he strongly suspected was the trace of cat piss.

Instead, he wondered which of his four underlings had seen this poor excuse of a habitation, linenless, yellow-stained duvet on the couch and all. He hoped it had been Galuyshka.

"She didn't say much at all, but she seemed to know what she was doing."

He nodded to himself, quietly pleased. A raise was in order for her.

"She also took the other two flasks and the large jar with the... wibbly wobbly... stuff in it. The one from the, uhm, bathroom. And two satchels of something out of that cabinet by the oven. Looked like cooking spices to me but she took them anyway." He cleared his throat. "Well, actually, she took it all away. Can't argue with a person who doesn't argue back."

Perhaps he should get a carpet. The cheap plastic flooring didn't offer much in terms of traction. Merlin knew he needed as much of that as he could get right now.

The rubber foot of his cane made an awful squelching sound on that PVC when he walked, a sound that reminded him uncomfortably of Horace Slughorn for reasons he didn't care to analyse.

He proceeded towards the couch, but once he had arrived – after what felt like a small and infuriating eternity to a naturally impatient man like himself – he didn't know what he should do there. He couldn't venture sitting down on that sagging, barely knee-high piece of furniture. It would make for a spectacularly ungraceful bit of geriatric gymnastics. Not in front of Potter. Not on that couch, either. Not on that duvet, for Mordred's sake.

There was a chair by the kitchenette counter but he knew it was rickety and – well, it was by the kitchen counter. It looked near since his flat was not of the spacious variety but it might as well be on the moon right now.

He turned around to face Potter. If Potter left, he could take his chance with trying to sit down on the couch, however long that formerly simple task would take and however ungainly it might manifest itself.

"That'll be all, Mr Potter."

Potter stared at him for some seconds. He stared back with a pointedly even face, although there was something boiling inside his chest.

"I could open the windows."

Boiling and seething. "I think I will be able to handle them myself."

"I'm sure you are." He even sounded like he meant it. "I didn't mean to imply-"

"Mr Potter."

A thousand million things came to his mind then, things he wanted to say or needed to say, inappropriate and unseemly things, cowardly, truthful, impossible things. He briefly wondered if this was the feeling that drove people into doing things like modern painting and making music and writing novels that were hundreds of pages long. Or, alternatively, into committing suicide.

"That will be all," he reiterated instead of all those things.

Maybe he should start with a letter. He had always been good with letters, his handwriting had been perfect for it – neat, pointy, slightly cursive when he wanted to, rather pleasing to the eye if one didn't look at the mercilessly snarky content.

'Mr Potter,' he could start.

'_I hereby apologise for the inconveniences __that I__  
_

Let's try that again.

_'__I hereby apologise for the inconveniences _that were caused. I understand your hearings in Paris, Bern, Berlin and London might lead to several weeks of punitive imprisonment, social work or considerable fines and heap upon you and Mr Malfoy, as well as on Shacklebolt in particular and the English Ministry in general, a substantial amount of unwanted and unfavourable press attention, the consequences of which might be even more unpleasant in the long term. Not to mention the _obnoxiously smartarsed_

Better strike those last two words.

_'rebukes from French, Swiss and German ministries you will probably not hear the end of for the rest of your political life.'_

Maybe if he just made the sentences long and complex enough there'd be enough space between the lines into which all of those unspeakable things might fit.

"That will be all," he said again.

Potter remained standing there as if frozen to the spot and it didn't bid fair for that to change any time soon.

'_Although your response to the following is predictable due to your earlier, categorical dismissal of the subject, I would request you allow me sharing in the accumulated amount of fines, as well as compensate you for the expenses incurred for my transportation, hospitalisation, __tortury_

No.

_'surgery and repatriation. Seeing that I am solely responsible for the former and was the beneficiary of the latter, I believe it would be a blatant non-propriety to accept this gratuitous grant, thus I insist on a reimbursement of outlay._'

His back and left leg were aching worryingly by now. Potter wouldn't move. _The kitchen chair it is, then._ He embarked on the journey towards it under the silent gaze of one ludicrously powerless Head Auror.

"Snape."

'_Said outlay includes the value you would appoint to the countless favours indubitably called in on my behalf and/or the pay those who were involved in the surgery itself or its covering up have received. _

_Despite the fact that, by all indications, the surgeons' course of action was to rip my bones from my body, split them open, scoop out the marrow, fill the hollows with shrapnel, fit the halves back together with some amount of duct tape, put them back in the wrong way up and secure them by tying a nice bow with the frayed ends of my muscles,_

Strike that whole paragraph.

_I appreciate the effort and the great lengths that were gone to in order to restore me back to something akin to health._'

Potter got no answer. He sighed and tried again. "Severus."

It was really a bit worrying how easily the youth was on first-name basis with him by now. Maybe it was time for him to stop thinking about them as 'youth'.

'_The reimbursement will also include the aforementioned rent._'

"Mr Potter, I do believe you will find your way out by yourself."

'_Please rest assured that no legal prosecution will follow on my part on the account of misuse of my signature, faking of the same, and forgery in no less than forty seven cases (that I know of). I understand that, at the time of giving my permission to administer unauthorized pharmaceuticals, I was already under the influence of said substance, injected into my leg some moments before' _

_'I also assure you that I, should the question ever arise from third parties such as the Swiss or German Ministry courts, will swear under oath to have granted explicit and implicit permission for everything that happened to me from the night of the 14__th __onward, which should effectively extricate you, Mr Malfoy and the mediwizards in attendance from responsibility._'

'_What you accomplished is, I can only avouch once more, highly appreciated by my person. __Or will be appreciated once it heals over, because right now, it quite simply hurts like gigantic mountains of fuck-_'

Maybe strike the last bit.

"You stubborn git!"

He stopped. Partially because of this uncharacteristic outbreak and partially because he physically needed to. He was sweating, out of breath, his back hurt. It was wearing to fake the opposite. For the second time in two days he berated himself for deciding against the second cane. With twice the number of crutches he might have made twice the distance and he would've been there. Almost.

Potter frowned at him, both angry and pleading, wordless for several moments. Then, when Severus turned to continue towards the kitchen chair with breath whistling from his nose in agitated little bursts, he suddenly asked, "What do I have to do? Tell me."

"Mr Potter, I'm not-"

"I cannot _leave_ you here, for Merlin's sake, look around. I will not. Not one more time will I just leave someone somewhere just because he's so damn stubborn and proud or angry with me – legitimately angry, even – and because he tells me to fuck off. Not," he breathed in shakily, "one more time."

He had heard the story of Ronald Weasley's demise. He didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing to suddenly be paralleled like this. He suspected the latter. He gripped the already slippery handle of his cane a little more tightly and didn't know what to say.

"Draco and I... we want... you."

That made his mouth go dry all at once. "Don't be ridiculous," it hissed out of him before he could stop himself.

"Pot, kettle, black," Potter responded with a gesture that included him, leaning heavily on his cane as he was, and the dingy apartment with its foul air. Then he repeated with an emphasis on every word, "We want you. _I_ want you."

His heart was trying to gallop out of his chest all of a sudden. The physical exertion, he knew. He grabbed at it, clawing at his shirtfront.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Potter pull his wand and point it at the kitchen chair. It slid towards him at a speed, spun around in mid-air and landed as a massive, cosy-looking wing chair that would've made Minerva McGonagall beam with pride. It skidded to a halt right behind him and gently nudged his calves.

"Please, sit." Potter tucked the wand back into his pocket and added in a low voice, "I promise this one won't tie you up."

If only he had enough breath for a snarky comeback. If only he could resist the pull of that wonderful chair.

Suddenly his cane was out of his palm and replaced by someone else's strong hand. His other flailing hand was caught as well in a firm, sure grip that readjusted itself and supported his elbow instead to better catch all his weight.

Suddenly, he was eye to eye with Potter who was the only thing holding him up, the only thing keeping him from crumbling to the ground in a painful mess of dislocated bones, half-overhealed titanium screws and torn stitches.

Skin contact was such an unusual thing, he thought. He had massive skin contact with his clothes every second of every day, also with his hair and with his own breath – and, on busy days at work, with several unspeakable and unpleasant substances – and none of it had never given him the slightest pause.

But when another person touched him – curiously, it didn't even matter if he touched his palms, calloused and acid- and alkaline-hardened, or a more tender part of him – it caused an earthquake inside and everything tilted a little.

"What do I have to do?" There it was again, that look of want and urgency that he had given in to once before. Like a feral, starving child trying to hold on to sustenance that was about to be taken away with his eyes only.

He stared back and didn't trust himself to utter so much as a word.

Potter gently handed him over to gravity. After a split second of falling and clutching Potter's hands in a panicked death grip, he was seated in what might have been the most comfortable chair on planet Earth. _And it still wobbles_. Severus hastily wiped the corner of his eye when Potter let him go.

"If it would make you feel better, you could tell yourself that it's all just for me." Potter had turned away and spoke with his back towards him. "Me, getting my way as per usual, being egoistic, greedy, lewd and entirely impossible." The last word came out as a groan as he forced open the living room window that hadn't been opened for quite some time and gotten jammed in its flaky frame.

The fresh air streaming into the room only reminded Severus of how bad the stink really was. Potter leaned out of the window and craned his neck to get a good look around. Presumably at all the nothing there was to see.

"I will probably be away for the next few months." His words were hard to catch over the sound of cars. "I need someone to have an eye or two on Draco for me. To keep him company."

He turned around and looked over to him as if to give him the opportunity to object or comment. Severus chose not to take it.

Potter vanished from his line of sight. Judging by the direction of his voice, he had gone to the bedroom.

"Even though he wouldn't admit, he is still trying to get over what happened in France and what he did there. He should have someone to talk to about it... if he wants to."

There was a hollow bump, a thump and a creak.

"He will need someone else to hold on to when I'm gone. It might come as a shock to him, seeing that I'm not the powerful, immune super-wizard I made him believe I am." Another bump. "I don't want him to get scared and feel... exposed." He said a spell Severus had never heard before. It made a sock crawl out from under the sofa and zoom towards the open bedroom door, shedding dust motes along the way.

There was a sound of a closing suitcase. Then, silence for quite some time.

When he turned his head, Potter stood there. By his side was the dark brown, more than slightly battered suitcase that had already been an artefact when it had come into his possession at the age of eleven. This was the same suitcase he had packed for Hogwarts for seven years in a row. He had always hated it. It smelled musty and like a sick animal, it would always get wet somehow and soak through a quarter of its contents, it would spring open unannounced and resist closing for no good reason. It was heavy and ugly. He couldn't get rid of it. In many respects, this damn suitcase belonged to him. In the deepest ways.

Judging by the bulge, it was full with every single piece of clothing he owned.

"Before we came here, you told me to get you back to your flat. '_I should go to my flat_', you said."

Potter wore an odd expression on his face. If he hadn't known better, he would've guessed that he was a little afraid.

"Here we are." He gestured with his free hand. "I think we've been here long enough. So let's go home now, shall we?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~  
-/**The End**/-

_I spent almost seven months writing this, with two large breaks in between. Prior to that, I already spent weeks dreaming about it, thinking about it, talking to myself to hear how it sounds. The stupid idea festered a bit and finally I caved in. This is the first extensive creative writing I have done in almost six years.  
_

_It's hard to accept that this is the best I could manage. In defiance of my narcissistic perfectionism, there are some parts I actually quite like. I see them in my head like scenes of a movie and they give me feelings._

_All in all, I wished you, dear reader, had a a quarter of the fun I had with this._

_I apologise for making you waste your time. I especially apologise for the unoriginality of it all and for occasionally atrocious grammar, confusion of British and American English, and catastrophic punctuation._

_Thank you._

P.S.: "This one won't tie you up". Yeah, I'm sorry you missed the actual ninth chapter. I went full crazy in that one.  



End file.
